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QUESTIONS OF THE DA Y. No. XIJII. 



SLAV OR SAXON 



A STUDY OF THE GROWTH AND TENDENCIES OF 
RUSSIAN CIVILIZATION 



WILLIAM DUDLEY FOULKE 



SECOND EDITION, REVISED 



G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
NEW YORK AND LONDON 

ttbe "Knickerbocker ipress 

1899 



ET^nograpli 



» L v 



Copyright, 1887 

BY 

WM. D. FOULKE 



JA 2C J90P 
By Znaurfca 



TIbe Tfcnfcfcerbocfccr press, IBew lt?orfe 






PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION. 

The certainty of the coming conflict between the Slav 
and the Saxon, which was foreshadowed in the edition of 
this work published in 1887, has become more generally 
apparent during the past year, owing to Russian intrigues 
in China; while the cordial friendship between England 
and America, which has grown up during our war with 
Spain, has made possible the union of American and 
English influence for the protection of our common civil- 
ization against the encroachments of autocracy. 

The time therefore seems opportune for issuing a re- 
vised edition, bringing down to the present moment the 
existing facts relating to the coming struggle, a struggle 
which seems certain to involve in its results the destiny 
of the wnole human race. 

W. D. F. 

Richmond, Ind., Dec. 1, 1898. 



AMONG the publications to which I have been under 
obligations, are " L' Empire des Tsars et les Russes," by 
Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu ; Rambaud's " History of Rus- 
sia"; Stepniak's " Russia under the Tsars," " Under- 
ground Russia," and The Russian Storm Cloud"; 
Vambery's articles in the Nineteenth Century entitled 
' Will Russia Conquer India ? " ; " The Russians at the 
Gates of Herat," by Charles Marvin; Tissot's " Russes 
et Allemands," Wallace's " Russia," and Dixon's " Free 
Russia"; also "China in Transformation," by A. R. 
Colquhoun, and the recent articles of Stanley, Hallett, 
Younghusband, and others in the Nineteenth Century. 
The literature upon the subject is comprehensive, and I 
have drawn freely from many sources, but more especially 
from the foregoing. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER 

I. — The Coming Struggle . 

II. — The Territory of Russia 
III. — The Russian People 
IV. — The Military Autocracy 

V. — Russian Conquests and Aggressions 
VI. — Russian Designs upon China 
VII. — The History of Russia . 
VIII. — The Reforms of Alexander II. . 
IX. — The Despotism of Alexander III. 

X. — Conclusion 



PAGE 

I 

IO 

20 

35 
42 

55 

66 

100 

116 

137 



SLAV OR SAXON. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE COMING STRUGGLE. 

It was said in an article published in the St. Petersburg 
Novo'e Vremya, in the year 1886, that Mr. Gladstone 
had recently uttered these words : " I like Russia, not 
without reason. I recognize in her a true and logical ally 
of England. The vital resources of the states of Europe 
are rapidly becoming exhausted. Their bone and sinew 
are going to Asia, Africa, and America. But long ex- 
perience proves that there are only two nations who know 
how to colonize — England and Russia. The other nations 
totally lack this quality. Therefore England and Russia 
only have a future. The other powers are on the decline. 
The time is not far off when Germany and France will 
disappear from the horizon of first-class powers. I hold, 
therefore, that it is bad policy for England and Russia 
to quarrel. Let us look at the question from the stand- 
point of mere profit. Where are the principal interests of 
Russia? In the Balkan Peninsula. And ours? In India 
and Africa. Therefore we might easily and advantageously 



2 Slav or Saxon. 

to both, draw our limits. We prefer Russia as an ally, 
also, because she has already land enough to last her for 
centuries. Russia is the most powerful country on land, 
and England is the most powerful country on sea. In 
this difference there is a mutual guaranty of our friend- 
ship." 

Whether Mr. Gladstone said these things or not, the 
thought that England and Russia are to be the two great 
nations of the Old World, is one which must have oc- 
curred to those who have watched the development of 
the great Northern power, and contrasted it with the 
growth of Anglo-Saxon civilization and with that of the 
remainder of continental Europe. The only mistake is 
the belief that the Slav and the Anglo-Saxon can continue 
to colonize and to conquer without collision. These two 
great branches of the Aryan stock, so different in charac- 
ter, customs, political life, and modes of thought, will 
never hold in harmony the divided sovereignty of the 
Eastern Continent. The deep-seated jealousy and ill-will 
which England and Russia show toward each other, have a 
basis more logical than the conclusions of Mr. Gladstone; 
and sooner or later must come that struggle for dominion 
which shall determine whether the civilization of the Slav 
or that of the Saxon shall be the civilization of the world. 

It is not easy for us in America to realize the gravity of 
the crisis. The nearness of our own forms of civilization 
shuts out from view the growth of the type which is 
more distant, or if we see it, we do not allow enough for 
the perspective. Russia is a long way off. Her ideas are 
so outlandish, so semi-barbarous, so undesirable in every 



The Corning Struggle. 3 

way, according to our thinking, that we do not see how 
they can be forced down the throat of humanity. Our 
own forms of social life are so much higher and better, 
that we feel sure that they must ultimately survive. 

But although the law of the survival of the fittest pre- 
vails in social, as well as in organic life, this does not always 
mean the survival of the highest type. In animal life 
many highly developed organisms have disappeared, 
while some of the simplest and crudest types exist to-day. 
So in history we find that many intellectual races have 
fallen a prey to barbarians. No one would have believed 
in the Rome of the Antonines, that the stretch of her uni- 
versal empire would be invaded, her legions overthrown, 
and her civilization all but extinguished by the half-naked 
and undisciplined hordes of Germany and Scythia, that 
same Scythia which is now creeping stealthily into the 
Balkan peninsula, China, and the plains of Central Asia; 
no one would have dreamed that the wealth and refine- 
ment of mediaeval India would become a prey to the wild 
tribes of Tartary, that same Tartary through which Russia 
to-day is working her way for another and more lasting 
conquest. The history of Russia herself furnishes several 
instances of high types of liberalism and culture, trodden 
down and stamped out by the brute force of barbarism. 
The Khazarui, a liberal and enlightened people of the 
South of Russia, who in the Middle Ages maintained inti- 
mate relations with Byzantium and Bagdad and Cordova, 
who built great cities, who established flourishing schools, 
who tolerated all religions, were crushed out and swept 
away by the barbarous peoples around them. It is, then, 



4 Slav or Saxon. 

no answer to say that because Russian culture is inferior 
to that of the Anglo-Saxon, that the Russian race must 
go under in the struggle. The question is this : does 
Russia possess those conditions of physical force which 
insure its future supremacy ? The characteristics of the 
land, and of the race which inhabits it, furnish great food 
for thought. 

First of all, it is evident enough, as Mr. Gladstone says, 
that among the nations of the Eastern Continent, England 
and Russia only have a future. The diminutive area of 
the remainder of continental Europe is not large enough 
to grow in. No people can acquire a lasting supremacy 
who are pent up within boundaries as narrow as those of 
any country in Western Europe. Indeed, we can see 
everywhere, except in England, America, and Russia, 
signs that the limits of growth are not far off. Leaving 
out of the question all mere barbarous communities, and 
those smaller peoples whose national unity is scarcely 
strong enough to protect them from the aggressions of 
their neighbors ; passing by such forms of nationality as 
the Ottoman and Persian empires, which are visibly tot- 
tering to ruin, or the Chinese, crystallized for centuries 
and now crumbling to pieces, we come to types like those 
furnished by the Latin races. Take Spain, for example. 
Spain grew with marvellous rapidity. It was but a life- 
time from the anarchy which preceded the reign of 
Ferdinand and Isabella to the great empire of Charles V. ; 
but under the influence of a baleful ecclesiasticism, the 
work of decay was as rapid as that of growth. Spain had 
a boundless empire in the New World, and she tried to 



The Coming Stritggle. 5 

colonize, but failed. The elements of progress were 
wanting, disintegration began, one colony after another 
dropped away, the defects of the parent stock repeated 
themselves in the offspring, and in the Spanish-American 
colonies, with new land and new political institutions, we 
have the early decrepitude inherited with Spanish blood. 
In Spain itself every thing reminds us of past greatness and 
present weakness. It is a land of memory, not of hope. 

There is reason to believe that France has seen its best 
days. That nation has played a brilliant part in history. 
The warlike instincts of the people, their keenness of in- 
tellect, their nervous energy, the elegance of their man- 
ners, their high rank in all that pertains to material civili- 
zation, the progress of their liberal thought, and their 
present republican institutions, show little signs of decay. 
Yet the French people of to-day are physically inferior to 
their ancestors. The wars of Napoleon made terrible 
ravages with their best types of manhood, while the prev- 
alent licentiousness which is ingrained in their literature 
as well as in their lives, gives us reason to believe that 
the French are not growing. They do not assimilate well 
with other peoples. They cannot colonize. In Canada, in 
Louisiana, in Hindostan, in the West Indies, they failed. 
Will they succeed better in Africa, Tongking, and Mada- 
gascar ? Where are the colonists to people these new 
possessions? French conquests are not permanent. The 
territory of France to-day is less than that of ancient 
Gaul. The population does not grow. It may well be 
that the downward step taken in the war with Germany 
was but the beginning of the end. 



6 Slav or Saxon. 

The great problem of Italian unity having been solved, 
that kingdom showed new signs of life ; but it is not a 
first-class power, and there is no indication that its vitality 
will extend much beyond the peninsula which it occupies. 
It is limited, like France and Germany, by natural boun- 
daries, both of territory and race. 

There is probably no great nation in the world whose 
life hangs upon a slenderer thread than that of Austria. 
Composed of a number of widely different races, there 
seems to be a lack of the power of welding them together, 
and the very existence of the monarchy is continually 
threatened with the possible disruption of its incongruous 
parts. Possessing, like France and Germany, a territory 
easily invaded, the most that can be expected is that it 
will retain, for a limited time only, its present status. 
During this generation, it has been stripped of its hegem- 
ony in the German Confederation and of its Italian 
possessions, and has obtained but a poor compensa- 
tion in the control of semi-barbarous Bosnia. The Aus- 
trian dynasty is the oldest in Europe, and the nation, if 
nation it can be called, betrays, most plainly of all, the 
weaknesses of old age. 

Germany, of late, has made great strides toward power 
and leadership in Europe. The patience and high in- 
tellectual attainments of the German people, the admir- 
able organization of the German army, and the genius of 
the Great Chancellor, placed it for a time at the head 
of Continental nations. But Germany has not yet shown 
any ability to leap across ethnological barriers. Its ter- 
ritory, situated in the heart of Europe, and densely 



The Coming Struggle 1 . 7 

peopled, does not furnish any great natural facilities for 
repelling aggressions, and the Germans do not colonize. 
The system of " the balance of power," so long recognized 
in Europe, will not permit the conquest of adjoining na- 
tions by Germany ad libitum. It will not allow the growth 
of the German people much faster than by natural multi- 
plication. The density of population is such, that this 
growth will press too closely upon subsistence to be very 
great. Much of the best blood of Germany is passing to 
America to be absorbed by us. There is reason to think 
that German power is not far from its culmination ; there 
is certainly a near limit, beyond which it cannot pass. 
The Germans themselves seem to be conscious of this. 
We can see this feeling in their late efforts to drive the 
wedge of colonization into the Carolines, the Samoan 
Islands, Africa, New Guinea, China, — anywhere to give 
themselves more room. But they can only colonize by 
sea, and there Great Britain holds them at her mercy. 
The limits of German expansion have been fixed by an 
inexorable law. 

The three great peoples that remain are the Americans, 
the English, and the Russians. All three have this com- 
mon advantage : they have unlimited facilities for growth. 
They can extend their dominions either by conquest 
or peaceful colonization into parts of the world where 
it will not be limited by the jealousy and balance-of- 
power statesmanship of neighboring peoples. They have 
not only the physical ability to grow, but they have also 
an inherent capacity for colonizing. The progress of the 
United States has been rapid, but our activity has been 



8 Slav or Saxon. 

limited to the Western Continent. We are happily freed 
by our unquestionable supremacy in America from those 
international struggles which distract the other hemis- 
phere, and we can move along in the paths of our inter- 
nal development with little fear of foreign interference or 
invasion. But the Eastern Continent possesses twice the 
area and nearly ten times the population of the Western. 
The struggle for the supremacy of the world must be 
fought there, and the great colossi who will contest, it 
with each other are England and Russia. The future 
world is to be Slav or Saxon. 

This struggle is coming sooner than it would seem, if 
we compare it with the slow development of nations and 
races in the past. Not that we shall live to see it ; it may 
be generations ahead of us, but the rapidity of social 
changes to-day is as much greater than that of like changes 
in past ages, as the speed of the locomotive is greater 
than that of the coach or caravan. We are scarcely yet 
able to realize the gigantic strides which civilization has 
made within our own times. We do as much now in ten 
years as the ancient world did in a thousand. If we look 
over the map of our boyhood, we can hardly recognize it. 
Take our own country. We used to see an enormous 
tract called the " Great American Desert." Whither has 
it gone? The vast blank on the map of Central Africa, 
that was marked " unexplored " — what has become of 
it ? We see a network of innumerable railways, over 
prairies which were then unknown. A ship canal is 
soon to unite the Atlantic and Pacific, as one already 
joins the Indian Ocean with the Mediterranean. The 



The Coming Struggle. 9 

time was when it took a century to civilize a tribe, a 
thousand years to develop a province. Now a single 
generation will witness the transformation of a whole 
continent. 

The great struggle between the Slav and the Saxon is 
not very far away. Its coming is already faintly visible. 
We see nothing now but a cloud the size of a man's hand, 
but the air is pregnant with a storm which will darken 
the whole sky. The difficulties in Afghanistan, Bulgaria, 
and China are only faint premonitory murmurs ; the real 
evidence of the coming struggle is the massing of the 
social forces on either side. There may be a dozen con- 
flicts, followed by a dozen reconciliations ; they would 
mean little except for the vast powers looming up behind. 

Let us review these marshalling forces and see whether 
the picture is overdrawn, or the danger is overestimated. 
Let us look at the future of England and Russia, in the 
light of what we know of their past. Let us examine the 
resources of the empire of the Czars, in respect to territory, 
population, wealth, military appliances, and other material 
and intellectual advantages and deficiencies. Let us look 
at the growth of Russia and see, if we can, whither its 
future tends. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE TERRITORY OF RUSSIA. 

IN the matter of land, Russia possesses nearly one sixth 
of the entire world, and her territory is continually grow- 
ing larger by conquest and colonization. Her possessions 
are greater in extent than those of any other nation that 
exists to-day, or any which has ever existed. With the 
gradual filling up of the world, this question of land is 
becoming more and more important. The mere quantity 
of earth seems to be the only thing which remains con- 
stant. If there be only space enough, the same skill which 
redeemed Holland from the sea, which consigned the 
Great American Desert to the realms of imagination, 
which built St. Petersburg upon a marsh, and Archangel 
upon the shores of the ^Frozen Ocean, seems able every- 
where to transmute that space into a productive agent for 
supplying the wants of man. The most inhospitable rock 
yields ore of priceless value. The swamp and bog contain 
the choicest soil ; the very Arctic teems with exhaustless 
life. Sahara itself needs nothing but the enterprise and 
skill of future generations to be transformed into a gar- 
den. So long as a nation grows, the value of itSs land 
continues to increase. The time has been when the 



The Territory of Russia. 1 1 

richest soil of Russia had no value. The time may come 
when the plains of Turkestan and the forests of Siberia 
will be valuable as the fields of Central Russia are to- 
day. Formerly great extent of territorial possessions was 
an element of political weakness. The forces of the state 
were scattered over a wide region where communication 
was impossible. When a province was attacked, it took 
too long to hear from it, too long to send assistance. By 
the time thought was interchanged, the conditions were 
all different. 

The Emperor Adrian relinquished vast provinces be- 
cause it weakened Rome to defend them. But now in a 
week we can make the journey of a year ; in the trans- 
mission of thought, space is annihilated altogether. The 
extent of its territory is the strongest security of Russian 
despotism ; it prevents opposing forces from concentrating, 
while the central authority, which controls the avenues of 
communication, can speedily bring its whole force to bear 
upon a single point anywhere in its dominions. 

Not only does the Russian Empire stand pre-eminent 
in mere extent of territory, it is equally remarkable for 
the homogeneity of its possessions. " Its principal char- 
acteristic is unity in immensity." Western Europe is 
broken by mountain ranges and divided by seas, gulfs, and 
bays ; there is diversity everywhere. Commerce is largely 
external, agriculture is of every kind, natural barriers 
separate great countries like Spain, England, Scandinavia, 
and Italy from the rest. But the Europe of Russia is one 
vast plain. The same physical unity prevails in Siberia 
and Turkestan. " Russia in Asia is not an exotic colony 



12 Slav or Saxon. 

impossible to assimilate or difficult to keep. It is a 
prolongation and natural dependence of the European 
territories." 

The monotony and level character of the land is not 
without its influence upon the temperament of the people. 
The lack of originality and individuality noticed by 
travellers in Russia is partly due to this cause. From an 
industrial point of view this unity has its disadvantages ; 
the employments of the people are not diversified. Russia 
is too much an agricultural state. But from a political 
point of view nothing could be better adapted to the con- 
centration of power. The people become a unit like the 
land, their occupations are the same, their thoughts, their 
aspirations. They are much more easily subjected to the 
control of a single will. Their separate interests are not 
blowing toward every quarter like the winds from the 
cave of Eolus. 

There is, however, one great variety in nature — the 
change of the seasons. It is only a few weeks from 
the bitter cold of an arctic winter to the heat of a 
summer which is more than tropical. The transfor- 
mation of nature is brilliant and startling. The winters 
are dazzling, the nights of summer are one long twi- 
light. The peasants' songs of spring, which celebrate 
the arrival of the " birds from paradise," the harvest 
melodies, w r hich have for their theme the sudden ripen- 
ing of the grain, and the songs of autumn, lamenting the 
departure of all fruitfulness in nature, are evidences of the 
effect upon the Russian temperament of these transforma- 
tions. The flexibility of Russian character owes much to 



The Territory of Russia, 13 

these sudden changes. If they lack originality in intellect, 
there is great originality in their feelings, tastes, and 
habits. The innumerable sects of religious fanatics, the 
strange types of character of which Ivan the Terrible and 
Peter the Great are illustrations, the capacity of the 
Russians for tremendous efforts upon occasions rather 
than for sustained endeavor, are not without relation to 
their long winters of torpor and inactivity, and their short, 
burning summers, when the work of a year must be com- 
pressed into a few brief months. To this, in part, may 
also be due the twofold character remarked by students of 
Russian life, the excesses of liberalism and conservatism, 
of veneration and cynicism, of hope and despondency, of 
intelligence and ignorance; the boldness in projects of 
reform, the timidity in execution. These contradictions, 
however, are modified by the practical good-sense of the 
Russians, their tendency to realism rather than abstract 
thought, their leaning toward physical science rather than 
intellectual philosophy. In all these things the nation 
shows the impulses and tendencies of childhood, and 
further culture and development may correct its short- 
comings. The desire for reforms of a tangible and physi- 
cal nature remind one much of the same tendency among 
our own people. With greater education and more lib- 
erty the Russians would hardly be behind us in this 
respect. 

The introduction of steam for travel and transportation 
will give greater advantages to Russia than to any other 
country. Its weakness in early days was its want of ac- 
cess to the sea. It was to remedy this that Peter the 



14 Slav or Saxon. 

Great conquered the Baltic provinces and built St. Peters- 
burg. It was in great part for this that he and Catharine 
and Nicholas plotted to overthrow the Ottoman Empire, 
to gain possession of the Bosphorus. But in these latter 
days, when communication by land is easier and swifter 
than by sea, this disadvantage is scarcely felt. From her 
present position Russia could overrun the whole Eastern 
Continent without a navy. For the purposes of interna- 
tional, as well as internal commerce, the railroad will soon 
supersede the ship and the steamer. In a struggle between 
England and Russia the maritime supremacy of England 
would be of little avail. 

Not only has Russia a vast extent of dominion, but a 
considerable portion of her territory is the most fertile 
land in the world. Across European Russia extend, from 
Northeast to Southwest, three great belts — the forests, the 
black land, and the steppes. Over the entire North of 
Russia extend these great forests. Many of the oldest 
cities have been built in the clearings. In the extreme 
North the land is barren, elsewhere it is fairly productive. 
South of the forests comes the great belt of black land. 
There is no richer soil anywhere. It has been farmed for 
centuries without fertilization ; but the most ruinous sys- 
tem of agriculture has failed to weaken its powers. " A 
little rest," as the farmers call it, has been all that has 
been needed. South of the black land extend the 
steppes, the prairies of Russia, where the grass grows 
higher than men's heads. The Northern part of these 
prairies is also fertile ; to the South they are adapted to 
pasturage only. The barren lands were formerly the 



The Territory of Russia. 15 

depths of a great inland sea. The area of this district 
is much less than that of the fertile steppes. 

These great belts are prolonged into Siberia. In the 
early history of Russia the South line of the forests was 
the boundary line which divided the agricultural from 
the nomad population, the Russians from the Tartars, the 
Muscovites from the Cossacks. In the forests, the popu- 
lation grows more slowly than farther South, and the peas- 
ants add to their farming a great variety of little industries 
in their agricultural villages, in which they engage during 
the long winter when there can be no labor in the field. 
More fruitful in agricultural promise are the unwooded 
zones of the South, which are increased from year to year 
by the cutting away of the forests. 

The black land and the Northern steppes, like our basin 
of the Mississippi, constitute one of those great storehouses 
of grain which seem to guarantee an unlimited supply for 
the future. The fertile steppes, like our prairies, are a 
vast sea of verdure, which is gradually falling into the 
hands of the husbandmen. It is destined to be conquered, 
by the peasants until " the steppes of Gogol, as in Amer- 
ica the prairies of Cooper, will soon be nothing but a 
remembrance. " 

During thousands of years, the great migrations from 
Asia into Europe have passed across these plains, and until 
the present century, the steppes have remained exposed to 
the encroachments of nomads. The settlement of much 
of the best land in Russia has been thus delayed. It has 
been since the subjugation of the Crimean Tartars and 
the Kirghis of the Caspian that this vast region has become 



1 6 Slav or Saxon. 

secure for the development of systematic agriculture. Twis 
natural obstacles remain — the absence of trees and the 
great dryness of the climate. But the discovery of oil and 
coal in these regions, and the improved facilities for com- 
merce, are soon to furnish the steppes of Russia with suf- 
ficient fuel and building material, while the planting of 
trees, which is even now commenced in some places, is 
likely to overcome the seasons of barrenness occasioned by 
the excessive drought. 

The present system of agriculture is very wasteful. 
Large tracts are abandoned successively every few years 
by the communities that farm them in most primitive 
fashion. But this is an evil which improved methods of 
culture are already beginning to overcome. 

The mineral resources of Russia are almost wholly un- 
developed, though we know that rich mines of gold, sil- 
ver, lead, copper, and platinum lie hidden in the depths 
of the Ural and Altai mountains. These regions seem 
destined to open up a new civilization in the same way as 
California and Australia. 

At a time when water-power was so essential to manu- 
factures, Russia was behindhand in this great department 
of industry ; but now that steam has usurped the place of 
this old motive-power, her advantages are equal to any. 
In natural facilities for agriculture, commerce, and manu- 
factures, as well as in mineral resources, Russia is not in- 
ferior to the most favored nations. Her natural produc- 
tions render her w T holly self-sustaining. If the ports of 
every civilized nation were closed against her, Russia 
would feel the loss less than any country in the world. 



The Territory of Russia. 1 7 

In this, too, we see a great advantage in a military point 
of view. 

There is some drawback in the matter of climate ; the 
whole of Russia and Siberia is subject to intense cold in 
winter. The heat of summer is scarcely less intense ; the 
climate has great extremes. The Northern plains of 
Siberia, stretching away into the Arctic Circle, as well 
as a considerable portion of Northern Russia, seem un- 
inhabitable. In the whole North the period of vegeta- 
tion is shorter, and the product of the earth more limited 
on that account. It looks to us now as though a great 
part of Russia must always remain a waste. But it is 
probable that we little know the powers of the civiliza- 
tion of the future for utilizing the most dreary and bar- 
ren regions. The ancient world would never have dreamed 
that a great city could be built on the shores of the White 
Sea. Russia has one compensation for this climate: It 
has produced a race, hardy, patient, and energetic ; the 
only civilized beings who can endure the rigors of its 
dreadful winters. The perseverance of Russian colonists 
and soldiers in overcoming obstacles which would be in- 
surmountable to others, has long been recognized by the 
world. 

Herbert Spencer says that the earliest civilization began 
in warm countries, where men did not have to wrestle 
with the elements for life alone ; where there was some 
surplus energy for the formation of society ; but that as 
civilization went on, and as the means of overcoming 
natural objects became greater, the highest social devel- 
opment moved into colder regions, where natural ob- 



1 8 Slav or Saxon. 

stacles brought out a corresponding energy, which not 
only overcame them, but strengthened the type. It is 
rather Northward than Westward that the course of em- 
pire moves ; beginning in India, Egypt, and Carthage, it 
has crept gradually up to Greece, Rome, Spain, France, 
till the sceptre passed to England, as it is now passing to 
Russia. The reign of the Normans in Sicily, France, 
England, and Russia itself, attests the supremacy of 
Northern vigor. 

The very fruitfulness of nature is sometimes hostile to 
the development of mankind. " Russia," in the words of 
Leroy-Beaulieu, " while it is ill-fitted to nourish the in- 
fancy of civilization, is one of those countries which is ad- 
mirably adapted to receive it and give it further growth." 
" The Russian soil does not use as its mere instrument 
him who cultivates it. It does not threaten his race with 
degeneration. It makes no Creoles. Man meets there 
only two obstructions — cold and space. Cold, more easily 
overcome than extreme heat and less to be feared by our 
civilization ; space, an enemy already mastered by Russia 
and its great ally for the future." 

The great extent of its territory, the sternness of its 
climate, and the absence of large centres of population, 
make a conquest of the country all but impossible. Rus- 
sia can be invaded, many of its towns destroyed, and per- 
haps, even its capital taken ; but the patience of a people 
who are willing to sacrifice their homes at the command 
of their emperor, to submit and to suffer as long as it 
may be necessary, and who alone are able to endure the 
rigors of a Russian winter, is sufficient to secure the 



The Territory of Russia. 19 

ultimate annihilation of any army which attempts the 
sudden conquest of Russia. There is too much of it to 
overrun. Nature combines with man to exterminate the 
invader. 

The only manner in which this vast empire could ever 
be subdued or reduced to an inferior position, is the 
manner in which Russia has herself spread her dominion, 
that is by the conquest in detail of small portions of her 
immense possessions (for instance, the Baltic Provinces, 
Poland, or Finland); the conqueror gradually consolidat- 
ing his power in the conquered provinces. This would re- 
quire not only superior strength, but a persistent purpose, 
extending over many years and probably generations. 
What nation is in a condition to undertake so vast an 
enterprise ? 



CHAPTER III. 

THE RUSSIAN PEOPLE. 

The present population of the Russian empire is about 
one hundred and twenty-five millions. That of the 
British empire, embracing the dense masses of India and 
Africa, is about four hundred millions. But the strength 
of a nation is not to be reckoned by mere numbers. The 
population of the Chinese empire is the greatest in the 
world, yet its solid and lifeless mass cannot resist the most 
trifling aggressions. The Indian empire of Her Majesty 
is composed of material of much the same sort. The 
soldiery has been greatly improved by European training, 
but it is still far behind that of Russia in those patient 
and enduring qualities which offer the only assurance of 
success in a long and desperate struggle. 

The population of Russia is distributed very unevenly. 
In the North and South it is extremely sparse; in the 
centre it is comparatively dense. This comprises the 
southern part of the forest zone, the black land, and 
Poland. Here manufactures and other branches of in- 
dustry are most fully developed. The centre of gravity 
of population is near Moscow — a little to the South of the 
ancient capital. In the central districts it is nearly as 

20 



The Russian People, 2 1 

dense as in continental Europe, and it grows most rapidly 
in these places. 

The Russian race is a compound of many elements, 
welded and fused together, sometimes by the most violent 
means. This process is still going on among the frontier 
races, especially among the Asiatic peoples. These are 
first conquered and then absorbed. The orginal stock, 
the Slav, which has retained the predominance in this 
work of compounding and re-compounding, belongs 
to the great Aryan family. Its kinship to the races of 
West Europe is shown by its language as well as by its 
physical and intellectual traits. The Slavs are most 
closely connected with the Germans in language, but 
they are nearer the Greeks and Latins in character. 
They are mobile, enthusiastic, intelligent, quick to per- 
ceive and act ; they lack the phlegmatic temperament of 
the Teutonic race. They are the latest grown of the 
Aryan children. Even to-day they are not sufficiently 
developed to reveal fully their intellectual aptitudes. 
Their country was exposed to continual Asiatic incur- 
sions, in past times, and their growth and civilization 
were greatly retarded. It is only in our generation that 
they have begun to assume any intellectual prominence ; 
but those who are acquainted with the Russian litera- 
ture of the present time, with the masterpieces of 
Tolstoi, Turgeneff, and Gogol, will hardly fail to foresee 
a brilliant future for a people capable of producing such 
works. Among the branches of the Aryan stock, those 
later in civilization have successively asserted their supe- 
riority over their elder brethren. The Greek yielded to 



22 Slav or Saxon. 

the Roman, the Roman to the Teuton and the Anglo- 
Saxon, and it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that 
even these may in turn give way to the Slav. Up to the 
present time the Slav peoples have been thought to lack 
originality. They have been learners at the schools of 
more enlightened nations, but their present literature 
shows that they are by no means wanting in the higher 
qualities of intellect. 

The parent people took up their abode in Western 
Russia, at an early day, while other branches of the 
same stock in Poland, Moravia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Servia, 
Bohemia, and elsewhere, became the ancestors of many of 
the various peoples now subject to Austrian and German 
rule, and of some that dwell in the Balkan Peninsula in 
a chaotic and unstable condition of semi-independence. 
There was also, at an early period, a small infusion of 
Byzantine blood, together with a large infusion of Byzan- 
tine influence, and later, some admixture with Teutonic 
stock, especially in the Baltic provinces ; also an amal- 
gamation with the Lithuanians, an ancient Aryan race, 
who preserved their primitive habits and their pagan- 
ism to a late period. But the great bulk of the tribes 
and races which the Slavs have absorbed were of Mongo- 
lian or Turanian origin. Most important among these 
during the early process of amalgamation, were the innu- 
merable Finnish tribes. Nestor, the oldest historian of 
Russia, gives us such a multitude of names of strange 
peoples which have disappeared from history, that it con- 
fuses us. Gradually these races were absorbed ; a few 
remnants are all that tell us where the rest have gone. 



The Russian People. 23 

Then came the fusion with Turks and Tartars, each 
change strengthening the Slav stock, while many of the 
Mongolian characteristics faded away. The Slavs of 
Great Russia (the Eastern portion surrounding Moscow) 
became gradually predominant and multiplied most rap- 
idly. It was they who acquired (mostly from the Finns, 
but also in part from the Tartars) the largest share of 
Mongolian blood. The Slavs of White Russia in the 
West, and Little Russia farther South, of purer ancestry, 
remained subordinate and increased more slowly. Rus- 
sian and Pole were once of the same race. Differences in 
religion and habits of political thought, during several 
centuries, have made the Poles the most intractable 
among the subjects of the Czar. 

The work of fusion, which has been going on for cen- 
turies, has thus developed the present Great Russian 
nationality, which now comprises a majority of the sub- 
jects of the Czar, and forms the ethnical basis of the 
Russian Empire. This process of race change and amal- 
gamation is still going on at points farther removed from 
the centre of the empire. Even the savages of Eastern 
Siberia are gradually being Russianized. Russian colo- 
nists go everywhere, mingle with the original peoples, 
and soon absorb them. There are to-day some eighty 
different races of men subject to the autocrat ; races 
that speak every possible language ; races that come 
from every parent stock ; races of every religion — Bud- 
dhists, Lamaists, Jews, Protestants, Greeks, Catholics, 
Mohammedans, and pagans of many varieties ; peoples 
that follow every pursuit in life — savages and nomads, 



24 Slav or Saxon. 

as well as pastoral, agricultural, and industrial commun- 
ities. 

But, in the language of Leroy-Beaulieu : 

With all its diverse races, Russia is by no means an inco- 
herent mass, a sort of political conglomerate or marqueterie 
of peoples. It resembles rather France than Turkey or 
Austria in the matter of national unity. If Russia can be 
compared to a mosaic, it is one of those ancient pavements 
where the basis is of a single substance and a single color, 
whose surface only is made of an embroidery of different 
pieces and diverse colors. The greater part of the population 
of foreign origin is thrown out on the extremities of Russia 
and forms around her, especially toward the East and West, a 
sort of girdle of greater or less thickness. All the centre is 
filled by a nationality, at once absorbing and expansive, in the 
midst of which are hidden some small German colonies and 
weak Finnish or Tartar communities, without coherence or 
national bond. In the interior of Russia, in place of unlike- 
nesses, varieties, and contrasts, that which strikes the traveller 
is the uniformity of population and the monotony of life. 

The language has few dialects, the towns are of the 
same form, the peasants the same in habits and mode of 
life. " The nation is made in the image of nature ; it 
shows the same unity, almost the same monotony, as the 
plains which it inhabits. " 

The tendency to colonize^ and incorporate other races 
is aided by a remarkable physical peculiarity of Russia. 
Throughout the whole of its great central plain, stone is 
almost entirely absent ; the buildings are generally of 
wood. Dwellings of this kind do not last. It used to 



The Russian People. 25 

be said that the towns of Russia were burned once every 
seven years. This lack of permanence, together with the 
vast supply of land and the absence of natural barriers, 
made the people half nomadic. Formerly, great bodies 
of peasants would leave their farms and start together in 
search of better lands. This tendency to move on still 
remains a trait of the Russian people. It is the parent 
spirit of that enterprise which is to-day civilizing the 
forests of Siberia and the plains of Turkestan. Russia 
belongs to one of those races which has been driven to 
continual motion by an impulse from within, one of those 
races whose calling is emigration and conquest. Rambaud, 
in his history of Russia, describes the process very forci- 
bly. He says : 

We must recognize that the Russian, almost as much as the 
Anglo-Saxon, has the instinct which drives men to emigrate 
and found colonies. The Russians do, in the far East of 
Europe, what the Anglo-Saxons do in the far West of America. 
They belong to one of the great races of pioneers and back- 
woodsmen. All the history of the Russian people, from the 
foundation of Moscow, is that of their advance into the forest, 
into the black land, into the prairie. The Russian has his 
trappers and settlers in the Cossacks of the Dnieper, the Don, 
and the Terek ; in the tireless fur-hunters of Siberia ; in the 
gold-diggers of the Ural and the Altai ; in the adventurous 
monks who lead the way, founding in regions ever more 
distant, a monastery which is to be the centre of a town ; 
lastly, in the Raskolniki, or Dissenters, Russian Puritans or 
Mormons, who are persecuted by laws human and divine, and 
seek from forest to forest the Jerusalem of their dreams. 



26 Slav or Saxon. 

The level plains of Russia naturally tempted men to migra- 
tion. The mountain keeps her own, the mountain calls her 
wanderers to return ; while the steppe, stretching away to the 
dimmest horizon, invites you to advance, to ride at a venture, 
to " go where the eyes glance." The flat and monotonous 
soil has no hold on its inhabitants ; they will find as bare a 
landscape anywhere. As for their hovel, how can they care 
for that, it is burned down so often ? The Western expression, 
" the ancestral roof," has no meaning for the Russian peasant. 
The native of Great Russia, accustomed to live on little, and 
endure the extremes of heat and cold, was born to brave the 
dangers and privations of the emigrant's life. With his crucifix, 
his ax in his belt, and his boots slung behind his back, he will 
go to the end of the Eastern world. However weak may be 
the infusion of the Russian element in an Asiatic population, 
it cannot transmute itself or disappear ; it must become the 
dominant power. History has helped to make this movement 
irresistible. When the Russian took refuge in Suzdal, he was 
compelled to clear and cultivate the very worst land of his 
future domain, for the black land was then overrun by nomads. 
How could he escape the temptation to go back and look in 
the South for more fertile soil, which, with less labor, would 
yield four times as great a harvest ? Villages and whole can- 
tons in Muscovy have been known to empty themselves in a 
moment, the peasants marching in a body, as in the old times 
of the invasions, toward the " black soil," the " warm soil," of 
the South. Government and the landholders were compelled 
to use the most horrible means to stop these migrations of the 
husbandmen. 

Without these repressive measures, the steppes would have 
been colonized two centuries earlier than they were. The 
report that the Czar authorized emigration, a forged ukase, a 



The Russian People. 2J 

rumor, any thing was enough to uproot whole peoples from 
the soil. The peasant's passion for wandering explains the 
development of Cossack life in the plains of the South ; it ex- 
plains the legislation which, from the beginning of the sixteenth 
century, chained the serf to the glebe and bound him to the 
soil. In the thirteenth century, on the other hand, the peasant 
was free. His prince encouraged him to emigrate, and hence 
came the colonization of Eastern Russia. The Russian race 
has the faculty of absorbing certain aboriginal stocks. The 
Little Russians assimilated the remnants of the Turkish 
tribes ; the Great Russians swallowed up the Finnish nations 
of the East. 

The qualities of the Russian peasant fit him admirably 
for this great work of the absorption of other races, espe- 
cially races whose civilization is of a lower type than his 
own. " He is good-natured, long-suffering, conciliatory, 
capable of bearing extreme hardships, and endowed with 
a marvellous power of adapting himself to circumstances." 
Arrogance and the assumption of personal or national 
superiority are wholly foreign to him. He occupies 
a few acres, tills his land in peace, mingles with the 
natives in the friendliest way, and the two races soon 
blend together and become one community, and finally 
one people. 

Vambery says : 

There has been no standstill in the Russian State from its 
infancy to this day. We have seen that while processes of 
crystallization were going on in one part of the gigantic Em- 
pire, there were already springing up new formations in other 



28 Slav or Saxon. 

parts of it, caused by the accession of new and fresh elements. 
The influence of ancient Rome in revolutionizing the ethnical 
relations of Europe can alone be compared in a certain degree 
with the Russianizing influence of the Russian State on Europe, 
with this difference, however, that the results attending the 
process of transformation under Russian agencies, whilst they 
are not more rapid in developing than in the case of Rome, 
are far more intense in their effect. We have no authentic 
statistics at our disposal concerning the progress of popula- 
tion in Russia during the last century, but if we consider 
that there were, at the most, thirty millions of Russians at 
the beginning of this century, and that their number has 
risen within recent times up to eighty millions, it will not be 
difficult to guess where the Voguls, Ostyaks, Tchermisses, and 
other nations about whose large numbers travellers of the last 
century have given us information, have got to. We neither 
wish to, nor can we, here speak of all the particulars of the 
process of amalgamation ; the process remains forever the 
old one. 

First appear on the stage the merchant and the Cossack ; 
they are followed by the Popa, with his superstition and wor- 
ship of images, and the rear is brought up by the Vodki and 
the Tchinovniks with their train of Russian peculiarities, 
and they all manage very soon, with due regard to local 
circumstances, to insinuate themselves into the good graces 
of the natives, an achievement which seldom meets with any 
resistance, owing to the prevailing Asiatic characteristics of 
Russian society. In due course of time, the natives, continu- 
ally imposed upon in their dealings with the crafty Russian 
merchant, fall victims of pauperism ; the holy-water sprinkle 
and the brandy flask inaugurate the process of denationaliza- 
tion, a process which is hastened by the cleverly inserted 



The Russian People. 29 

Wedges of Cossack colonies, and half a century of Russian 
reign has proved sufficient to turn Ural- Altaians of the purest 
Asiatic stock into Aryan Russians. The physical character- 
istics alone survive for a while, like ruins of the former 
ethnical structure ; but even these last mementos become ob- 
literated by the crossing of races which results from inter- 
marriage, and we meet to-day genuine Russians in countries 
where in the last century no traces of them could have been 
found. 

Wallace thus describes the changes still going on : 

During my wanderings in the Northern provinces, I have 
found villages in every stage of Russification. In one, every 
thing seemed thoroughly Finnish : the inhabitants had a 
reddish-olive skin, very high cheek-bones, obliquely set eyes, 
and a peculiar costume ; none of the women and very few of 
the men could understand Russian, and any Russian who 
visited the place was regarded as a foreigner. In a second, 
there were already some Russian inhabitants ; the others had 
lost something of their pure Finnish type, many of the men 
had discarded the old costume and spoke Russian fluently, 
and a Russian visitor was no longer shunned. In a third, the 
Finnish type was still further weakened ; all the men spoke 
Russian and nearly all the women understood it ; the old male 
costume had entirely disappeared, and the old female costume 
was rapidly following it ; and intermarriage with the Russian 
population was no longer rare. In a fourth, intermarriage had 
almost completely done its work, and the old Finnish element 
could be detected merely in certain peculiarities of physiog- 
nomy and accent. 

And Wallace, as well as Leroy-Beaulieu, remarks the 



30 Slav or Saxon. 

greater persistence of former race characteristics among 
the women than among the men. 

From the continuation of this work of consolidation up 
to the present time, as well as from Russian history, it is 
evident that the Russian people is in a state of formation 
both moral and material. Its power is less to-day than its 
size or population. Its weakness in the Crimean and Bul- 
garian wars is an evidence of this. But this is the weak- 
ness of infancy and not of old age, and will disappear with 
the firmer fibre of a larger growth. 

Most of the capitals of the governments in the South 
and East are younger than the capitals of the Atlantic 
States of North America. The great metropolis of Odessa 
is less than a century old. These new districts of Russia 
have increased tenfold in less than one hundred years. 
This is caused by colonization and the process of fusion 
with the native races which accompanies it. This process 
of fusion becomes more and more rapid as facilities for 
communication increase. 

Sociology has shown that compound races, where the 
elements composing them are not too incongruous for 
admixture, are the best races. Indeed, the Anglo-Saxons 
have furnished proof of this as well as the French and the 
Italians. The union in these cases was accomplished 
centuries ago. The union of the Gauls and Franks, as 
well as that of the Lombards and the Latins took place 
before the Norman-Saxon fusion, and the vigor of these 
peoples has not lasted like that of the Anglo-Saxon, 
But this same process is going on in Russia to-day just as 
it is in America, where large immigration and the admix- 



The Russian People. 3 1 

ture of Celtic and German blood is improving the American 
stock. Russians seeem to have the faculty of absorb- 
ing greater varieties of the human species than Anglo- 
Saxons. No difference of race, language, or color seems 
to stand in their way. The very names of the aborigines 
become changed as soon as the heel of Russian conquest 
has trodden over their land. Lieutenant Alikhanoff, the 
adventurer who planned the capture of Merv, was the 
Asiatic Mussulman, Ali Khan. When he became a Rus- 
sian, the addition of a suffix gave him a new name. The 
identity of the conquered race is lost in this great process 
of amalgamation. There is not an office in the Russian 
State, to which the most savage of its subjects is not 
as eligible as the native of St. Petersburg. General 
Melikoff, whose power was second to that of the Czar 
alone, was not a Russian, but a Georgian. In most places 
no difference is recognized in law, custom, or education. 
The Russian is the only language taught in the schools, 
official business is transacted in no other tongue. The 
natives who acquire it rise rapidly in the service. In Po- 
land this transmutation has been brought about under 
circumstances of great cruelty. The Poles loved dearly 
their language, their church, their ancient institutions. 
Their civilization was at least equal to that of Russia. 
The forcible up-rooting of all that was dear to them has 
been a source of great sorrow and suffering. 

Similar changes are accomplished by force elsewhere. 
Colonies of Russians are sent into new districts by Im- 
perial command. Great numbers of men are exiled for 
various offences from different portions of Russia, and 



32 Slav or Saxon. 

• 
compelled to live in other parts of the empire, thus keep- 
ing the whole of Russian society in a state of motion, 
and preventing in great degree the fossilization which 
so commonly follows upon the footsteps of autocratic 
rule. The Russian people are patient and submit to 
these changes without a murmur. When criminals are 
exiled to Siberia, their families accompany them, and these 
convict settlements form nuclei for the growth of infant 
colonies. This process of colonization by force aids ma- 
terially the vast currents of voluntary colonization pro- 
duced by the adventurous spirit of the Russians themselves. 
Even the Church, a conservative force elsewhere, encour- 
ages this growth, and the great monasteries of the Black 
Clergy have often been the outposts of Russian civilization. 
Add to this the fact that all emigration from Russia is 
prohibited, that Russia does not recognize the right of 
any of her subjects to change his allegiance or nationality, 
that the Russian can never leave his province, his country, 
nor his town, without the permission of his government, 
which is refused if he intends permanent expatriation, and 
we have a system which insures for a long time the con- 
stant growth of the Russian people. Statistics are acces- 
sible for only a short time back, but from them we learn 
that the population of Russia doubles in somewhat less 
than sixty years. This is slower than the growth of 
the United States, which is aided by a large influx of 
foreign immigrants. There is comparatively little immi- 
gration into Russia; the growth is internal. When in- 
dustrial conditions change, emigration to America may 
cease. But in Russia we have the assurance of a constant 



The Russian People, 33 

increase in population. One peculiar feature in Russian 
social life tends to secure the rapid growth of the people 
by natural multiplication. The individual ownership of 
property in all other civilized states brings with it some 
restriction to the growth of population. The larger the 
family the less must be the share of each child in the 
patrimony. But in Russia, where the inhabitants of each 
village own its land in common, the share of each family 
is in proportion to the number of male members ; or in 
proportion to the number of the heads of households. 
The greater the number of male children the larger will 
be the share of the family in the communal land, either 
when the child is born or when he becomes the head of a 
new household. The growth of population is thus en- 
couraged, and it is natural that it should be much more 
rapid in Russia than in the countries of the West. The 
great drawback up to the present time has been on ac- 
count of unfavorable conditions of climate and hygiene. 
Russian families are very large, but the mortality is very 
great. The great mass of the people have hitherto 
known nothing of medicine, surgery, or the laws of 
health. The natural increase in population has been 
much checked on this account. The wretched food, 
the long fasts prescribed by the church, drunkenness, 
insufficient ventilation in winter, the filthy habits of 
the peasantry, the contagious diseases common in the 
villages, — all these things make the death-rate very high. 
Most of these difficulties, however, can be avoided by 
greater knowledge and care, and there has been a de- 
cided improvement of late years. With proper precau- 



34 



Slav or Saxon. 



tions, the severity of the climate is no great drawback, as 
the high average duration of human life in Scandinavia 
abundantly proves. If the present communal system 
lasts, the birth-rate will continue to be great, while a bet- 
ter knowledge of the laws of health will materially lessen 
the mortality. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE MILITARY AUTOCRACY. 

IT is not only the vast area and constantly increasing 
population of Russia which qualifies her for that career 
of universal dominion to which she aspires, but also the 
character of her political institutions, now unique among 
the great powers of the world. It is the complete and 
absolute unity which her autocracy gives, it is the strength 
of her military institutions which threatens civilization. 
A peculiar fitness for this form of government seems 
now to be ingrained in the Russian people, not indeed 
by nature, for the Slav races were originally free, but 
by the force of long-continued custom. Among the 
great mass of the Russian people (kept ignorant indeed 
by this same despotism), an autocratic government is the 
highest ideal, and the Holy Father, the Czar, is looked 
upon with the deepest reverence. When, upon the acces- 
sion of Anna Ivanovna, after the time of Peter the Great, 
it was proposed to limit her authority, many of her 
subjects expressed the strongest dissatisfaction, and 
demanded that she should remain absolute ruler, which 
she did. Autocracy has a useful servant in the Rus- 
sian Church. The Roman hierarchy has been some- 

35 



36 Slav or Saxon. 

times a source of strength, but at others a source of 
weakness to monarchy. The concentration of the religious 
thought of a people upon a foreign object, has often dL 
minished their loyalty to their own sovereign. The Russian 
Church is a purely national institution, and is wholly sub- 
servient to the temporal power of the Czar. It was one 
of the most formidable instruments in the making of the 
despotism. Every dignitary in it, from the patriarch to 
the curate, held his place in absolute dependence upon the 
will of the Prince. The notions of autocracy came into 
Russia from Byzantium, with the Church. Absolute and 
unquestioned obedience to the will of the Czar is part of 
the religion of every Russian, indeed the chief part. It 
is impressed upon him as his highest duty by a clergy 
who are the facile instruments of the Czar for that pur- 
pose. Rebellion is something beyond ordinary heresy 
and sacrilege. The thoughts of the people are bound in 
spiritual chains, quite as effectually as their bodies are 
subject to physical power. There is as little liberty of 
thought as of action ; the dread of spiritual punishment is, 
perhaps, more effective than the fear of Siberia or the 
fortresses. 

In Russia only has autocracy been able to withstand 
the influences of modern civilization. Nicholas was 
perhaps more an autocrat than any of his predecessors. 
He regarded not only the earth, but the very skies of 
Russia as his possessions. Not even in thought would he 
permit his authority to be questioned. Whatever it may 
do in the future, the revolutionary spirit in Russia has 
as yet touched only the upper layers of society ; it is 



The Military Autocracy. 37 

found mostly among the small class of the well educated. 
It destroyed a czar, it may overthrow a dynasty, but it 
must have a much greater growth than it has yet attained 
to up-root from Russia the despotic principle which has 
been so long ingrained in the fibre of its political organ- 
ism. The Anglo-Saxon form of government is still a 
long way off from the Russian people. Whatever consti- 
tution may in the future be given to Russia, it is certain 
that it will at first tend more than the organic law of 
other states to the centralization of political power. In- 
dividual life will still be largely regulated by government 
agencies. It would take some time (even if the govern- 
ment were so disposed) to lift a hundred million people 
out of the ignorance and habits of unquestioned obedi- 
ence to which the despotism has accustomed them. 

The absence of great centres of population has also fa- 
vored the growth and maintenance of the despotic princi- 
ple ; there is no point where the forces of resistance can 
combine. Only seventeen of all the Russian cities have a 
population of over fifty thousand. Not more than one 
tenth of the people dwell in cities. Russia is a strange 
example of the survival, in our own age, of a type of 
civilized society almost wholly militant ; a nation ruled 
as if it were an army. Except in the tiny village commu- 
nities, local self-government is confined to the most 
trifling matters ; a few bureaus at the capital direct 
every thing. The growth of the Russian people is by 
militant methods, totally different from the industrial 
methods of English development. The political integra- 
tion of Russia contrasts in a manner most menacing with 



3 8 Slav or Saxon. 

the process of disintegration which is going on every- 
where in the British Empire. In spite of the immense 
industrial growth of England and her colonies, the politi- 
cal bonds between them are becoming weaker. The 
distant colonies, such as Canada, Australia, and South 
Africa, inhabited by Anglo-Saxon peoples, are almost 
wholly independent. A certain moral support is about all 
that the mother country can count upon. They are 
little better than friendly nations, the ties have been vol- 
untarily relaxed in favor of local self-government and in 
the interest of individual liberty. The agitation for 
home rule in Ireland leads us to think that a similar 
policy will be pursued at no distant time with respect 
to that island. A great blessing is conferred upon 
humanity by this policy if the Anglo-Saxon race is to 
remain predominant. 

A work written by H. Y. S. Cotten, of the Bengal Civil 
Service, " New India, or India in Transition/' demon- 
strates that the present mode of governing that empire 
cannot last ; that the British administration does not 
respond to the currents of native thought and feeling, 
that even the English ideas, absorbed by the peoples of 
Hindostan, have made them less satisfied with a foreign 
yoke, which is itself inconsistent with those ideas ; that 
the English and the natives do not understand each 
other, and there is a strong desire on the part of the 
latter to govern themselves in their own way. The Eng- 
lish claim to have been educating them for the duties and 
responsibilities of self-government, and the tendency will 
be toward the granting of this at no very distant day. 



The Military Autocracy. 39 

Mr. Cotten insists that the future of India will be a fede- 
ration of independent powers, cemented together by the 
power of England. 

But this policy, both in India and elsewhere, so salutary 
in other respects, may render England all the more unable, 
in a military point of view, to cope with her great antag- 
onist, whose social forces are moving in an opposite di- 
rection. In the great struggle to come, England will be 
aided by the self-interest and the affection of a large 
number of dependent industrial peoples, averse to war, 
from whom she can compel little against their will. She 
will be confronted by an antagonist whose nation is an 
army, whose citizens are accustomed by habit and inherit- 
ance of thought to obey the slightest wish of the central 
authority which can direct the energies of every man in 
the Russian dominions toward the accomplishment of a 
single object. 

The Russian army is to-day the largest in the world. 
In time of war it can be augmented to more than three 
millions of men. At the present moment the Russian 
soldiers may not be equal to their English rivals ; but 
they possess great staying qualities. Ever since the time 
of Peter the Great they have learned how to conquer 
through defeat. 

The Russian soldier is thus described by M. Cucheval 
Clarigny : 

Docile, as well as brave, easily contented, supporting with- 
out complaint all fatigues and privations, and ready for every 
thing ; the Russian soldier constructs roads, clears canals, and 
re-establishes the ancient aqueducts. He makes the bricks 



40 Slav or Saxon. 

with which he builds the forts and the barracks which he in- 
habits ; he fabricates his own cartridges and projectiles ; he is 
a mason, a metal-founder, or a carpenter, according to the 
need of the hour, and the day after he is dismissed he con- 
tentedly follows the plow. 

With such instruments at its disposal the Russian power will 
never give way. A few years will suffice to render final the 
conquest of any land on which it has set its foot. 

Another great advantage of autocracy over English lib- 
eralism in war is this: A policy dependent upon the will 
of one man only is pretty sure to be persisted in. It 
must be a very weak czar who will waver from month to 
month, or from year to year in his purposes, while the 
English government, depending for its existence upon the 
majority of the House of Commons, is subject not only 
to a change in the policy of the ministry, but to sudden 
changes in the ministry itself. The British constitution 
is defective in giving effect too quickly to sudden revolu- 
tions in popular thought. While a government ought to 
embody the thought of the people, it should be its per- 
manent conviction, and not its mere temporary impulse. 
A ministry coming in on some fresh tide of popular 
passion may completely overthrow the plans of its prede- 
cessors. In war, such a system is almost as bad as the old 
Roman plan of dividing the leadership of an army be- 
tween two generals, and providing that each should be in 
command a single day. In constancy of purpose do we 
find the key to success. 

It looks now as if the conflict between England and 
Russia cannot much longer be postponed. Should it last 



The Military Autocracy. 41 

long, and involve great sacrifices, the English people 
might think it better to give up their Asiatic posses- 
sions than to continue to defend them at too great a cost. 
The cry of " Perish India " is sometimes heard, and in 
the presence of the great social struggles which are loom- 
ing up before the English people, the land question, the 
Irish question, the labor question, the desire of England 
to retain its foreign possessions is likely to grow less and 
less. The sceptre is passing from the land-owning and 
cultivated classes of England to those who have a hard 
struggle to earn their daily bread, who have no time to 
care for prestige and political power, who will not sacri- 
fice their own interests for objects as distant as China or 
India. Let India fall, and Russia is assured the domina- 
tion of the continent. 



CHAPTER V. 

RUSSIAN CONQUESTS AND AGGRESSIONS. 

WHEN we consider the probable growth of the Russian 
Empire in the future by the light of what it has at 
ready done, we find enough to appall the imagination. 
When the Russian people first appear in history, they 
occupy a territory considerably less than one fifth of their 
present European possessions alone. The former capital 
of Russia, Moscow, was built upon lands conquered from 
Asiatic races ; the present capital, St. Petersburg, upon 
lands wrested from the Swedes as late as the time of Peter 
the Great. The little plateau of Valdai, in the Northwest 
of Russia, is the source of three great river systems, the 
Ilmen, connecting it with the great lakes and rivers in the 
North country, the Dnieper, flowing South into the Black 
Sea, and the Volga flowing Southeast into the Caspian. 
This was the cradle of the Russian people. The early 
capitals, Kief and Novgorod, were upon the Dnieper and 
the Ilmen respectively. Along these channels spread the 
ancient civilization of Russia; from Novgorod to the 
Northeast, finally reaching the shores of the White Sea 
and the Arctic Ocean ; from Kief to the Southwest, men- 
acing even the power of Byzantium ; and later, after the 

42 



Russian Conquests and Aggressions. 43 

temporary overthrow of Kief, Russia went East to Mos- 
cow, and on to the Urals, and Southeast along the Volga 
to the Caspian, and across the Urals to Siberia. Then 
began the struggle with Sweden for the provinces upon 
the Baltic. Then the Cossacks of South Russia were 
united with the Muscovite empire, and vast tracts of 
land were wrested from the Turks. Then came the 
struggle with Poland, resulting in the three partitions of 
that unhappy kingdom. Then followed the seizure of 
Finland from the Swedish monarchy. Then the Caucasus 
fell, and new acquisitions were made from Persia and 
Turkey. Then the country of the Amoor was wrested 
from China and Saghalien won by shrewd diplomacy from 
Japan ; then the network of Russian conquest enveloped 
the plains of Turkestan and spread to Afghanistan, while 
Mongolia and Thibet have been carefully explored with 
a view to future annexation. Colonel Prejewalsky says 
that during his expedition to Thibet in 1 884-1 885 — 

A portrait of the Czar acted like a charm. When it was 
shown to the people they went into raptures. The conviction 
grows in Thibet that the " Divine figure of the North will 
soon extend his protection to the expectant Mongols who are 
sick of Mandarin tyranny/' 

Prejewalsky further says: 

The much-lauded two centuries of friendship between Rus- 
sia and China, notwithstanding all our efforts to prolong it, 
even at the price of concession and indulgence, hang in reality 
by a thread which any day may snap asunder. The favorable 



44 Slav or Saxon. 

solution of the many vexed questions which confront us is 
hardly to be attained by peaceful means. It may be that the 
moment for war is not far distant. Whether we like it or not, 
we have a long account which must be settled, and practical 
proof given to our haughty neighbors, that Russian spirit and 
Russian courage are equally potent factors, whether in the 
heart of Great Russia or in the Asiatic Far East. 

No geographical nor ethnographical limits have been 
broad enough to confine Russian ambition. Her boundaries 
are changing from year to year; no man can foresee the 
end. Let the conquered peoples speak what language 
they will, let their skin be of whatever color, let their re- 
ligion be what it may, Catholic as in Poland, Protestant 
as in Finland, Pagan as in Siberia, Moslem as in Turke- 
stan, it is all one ; they soon become parts of the great 
Russian race. Who can draw the limits of this power of 
expansion ? We have evidence enough that Russian am- 
bition has many times plotted conquests which have not 
yet been made. Catharine the Second, who divided Po- 
land with Austria and Prussia, planned a division of the 
Turkish Empire also. Paul the First held correspondence 
with Napoleon, and ordered an army of invasion to set 
out for India. The Moscow Gazette in 1832 declared that 
the next treaty with England must be made at Calcutta. 
Nicholas began the war which terminated in the Crimea, for 
the possession of the Ottoman Empire and his proposition 
to the English ambassador for a division of the sick man's 
assets, can hardly have faded from the memory of many who 
are still living. The last Turkish war was fomented by Rus- 
sian emissaries in the Balkan peninsula for a like purpose. 



Russian Conquests and Aggressions. 45 

There is no better illustration of the greed of Russia, 
and of the unprincipled manner in which she seeks to 
absorb her smaller and weaker neighbors, than the events 
which took place in Bulgaria in the year 1886. The 
sovereign of that country was deeply beloved by his sub- 
jects, but because, in obedience to their wishes, he was 
unwilling to carry out the policy of Russia at the time of 
the revolution in Eastern Romelia, Russia determined 
that he should no longer rule. First, he was dismissed 
in disgrace from the colonelcy of a Russian regiment to 
which he had been appointed. We next read that the 
Russian newspapers are urging the Czar to intervene in 
Bulgaria unless Prince Alexander is deposed by his own 
subjects. Bulgaria is infested with Russian agents. Bul- 
garian regiments are corrupted by Russian gold, and on 
the 20th of August a regiment of cavalry is detained in 
Sofia after nightfall when other troops had retired to 
their barracks, and about three o'clock in the morning 
they surround the palace of the prince. Alexander is in 
bed. The revolutionary leaders force their way to his 
ante-chamber and seize him. He is made a prisoner on 
his own yacht and conducted to Russia. The report is 
spread that he has abdicated. The Russian press now 
announces that it does not believe the other powers will 
interfere with Russia's " direct pacification of Bulgaria." 
Zankoff, the leader of the insurrection, is made minister, 
and proclaims that the Czar will protect Bulgaria. But 
the crime of the capture of Alexander is so infamous that 
the Russian government does not dare to avow openly its 
participation in the measure. Alexander lands at Reni, 



46 Slav or Saxon. 

but Russia does not venture to detain him within her 
borders. He finds that his people have arisen almost to 
a man in his behalf. A great concourse meet him at 
every point. Soldiers who joined the insurrection con- 
fess that they received twenty rubles each, and were told 
that Alexander had plotted to sell Bulgaria to the Turks. 
DeGiers says that Russia will not occupy Bulgaria while 
it remains tranquil, but that Russia's position will be 
critical should Alexander insist upon executing the con- 
spirators. Now, if Russia did not incite the revolt, of 
what interest is it to her whether or not political crime is 
punished in a neighboring country ? Zankoff is arrested, 
but Alexander is compelled to order his release, On 
August 30th, Alexander sends a most submissive tele- 
gram to the Czar. The Czar replies: " I cannot approve 
of your return to Bulgaria, foreseeing from it sinister 
consequences to the kingdom so sorely tried. 
Your Highness must decide your own course; I reserve 
to myself to judge what my father's venerated memory, 
the interests of Russia, and the peace of the East, require 
of me." 

Alexander now finds himself abandoned by the other 
powers. Germany, Austria, and Russia forbade him to 
execute the plotters against him, thus depriving him of 
the very essence of power. So he resigns. He says : " I 
cannot remain in Bulgaria, for the Czar will not permit 
me. I am forced to quit the throne. The independence 
of Bulgaria requires that I leave the country ; if I did not, 
Russia would occupy it. " Regents are appointed. The 
Czar agrees to recognize the regency on condition that no 



Russian Conquests and Aggressions 47 

acts of violence be committed, and acts of violence are con- 
tinually incited by Russian agents. The Bulgarian So- 
branje resolve to court-martial the officers inculpated in 
kidnapping Alexander. 

But soon the conspirators, instead of being punished, 
are demanding, by means of Russian influence, a direct 
representation in the government. Kaulbars is sent as 
Russian agent, and thanks Zankoff and his friends for 
their kindly welcome, asking them (not the regency) to 
announce throughout the country that the Czar will give 
protection to Bulgaria on condition that full confidence be 
placed in him. Kaulbars declares that political prisoners 
must be released and the state of siege raised, and unless 
Russia's demands are obeyed he will leave Bulgaria, and 
the occupation of the country will follow. He demands 
the indefinite postponement of the election for members 
of the National Assembly; but this is not done. He 
accuses the Bulgarians of insubordination, and declares 
that Russia cannot allow Bulgaria to try the kidnappers 
of Alexander, nor can Alexander return. In the elections 
four hundred and eighty representatives of the party of 
the regency are chosen as against forty-one of all other 
parties. The majorities are immense. But now Russia 
declares the elections illegal and demands a postponement 
of the Sobranje. The government refuses to yield. It 
is reported that Kaulbars tries to win over several of the 
Bulgarian garrisons to work a revolution in favor of 
Russia. 

The Sobranje decide to send to the Czar a deputation 
to complain of the action of Kaulbars, but the Russian 



48 Slav or Saxon. 

consuls are ordered to refuse passports, and Kaulbars 
informs the government that Russia will regard the pro- 
ceedings of the Sobranje as void. The Russian consul at 
Varna threatens to bombard the town unless the prefect 
permits free access of the Russo-Bulgarian partisans to 
the consulate, and Kaulbars informs the Bulgarian foreign 
minister that the Russian gun-boats there will vigorously 
affirm their importance if events render it necessary. 

In compliance with the demands of Kaulbars, the plot- 
ters against Alexander are released. And now the Russian, 
Nabakoff, leads a band of Montenegrins at midnight 
and attacks the prefecture at Burgas, seizes the prefect, 
and proclaims Russian rule : but his revolt also, is soon 
quelled. These plotters too are tried, but Kaulbars de- 
clares the trial void. England and Austria are at last 
awakened and act with firmness to prevent further out- 
rages. Lord Salisbury denounces " the midnight conspira- 
cy, led by men debauched by foreign gold, which hunted 
Prince Alexander from the throne of Bulgaria and out- 
raged the conscience and sentiment of Europe." Prudence 
will not permit an immediate resort to arms, so Russia 
will bide her time. 

The present aggressions of the Czar are thus epitomized 
by Charles Marvin : 

Russia has a frontier line across Asia five thousand miles 
in length, no single spot of which can be regarded as perma- 
nent. Starting from the Pacific, we find that she hankers for 
the northern part of Corea, regards as undetermined the 
boundary with Manchuria and Mongolia, regrets that she gave 



Russian Conquests and Aggressions. 49 

back Kuldja, hopes that she will some day have Kashgar, 
questions the Ameer's right to rule Afghan Turkestan, demands 
the gates of Herat, keeps open a great and growing complica- 
tion with Persia about the Khorassan frontier, treats more and 
more every year the Shah as a dependent sovereign, discusses 
having some day a port in the Persian Gulf, and believes she 
will be the future mistress of the whole of Asia Minor. 

Let us briefly review the course of the Russians in 
Turkestan during the past twenty years. Central Asia, 
while it contains large and valuable oases, adapted to 
stock-raising and many other forms of agriculture, has no 
such stores of wealth as would justify its conquest for its 
own sake. Possibly the Russians did not know this when 
they first undertook its subjection, but they have long 
since understood it, and the continued march of Russian 
conquest must have in view some object beyond the mere 
possession of these Central Asian districts. The expense 
of administering the government in these regions is con- 
siderably greater than the revenues derived from them, 
yet the Russians press their conquests farther and farther. 
Why do they do this ? Their object is adequately ex- 
plained by the words and acts of some of their own great 
military authorities. 

The designs of the Emperor Paul, who projected a 
march upon India (which was to be stimulated by raising 
hopes of plunder in the minds of the wild nomads of 
Central Asia, who were to be invited to join him), were 
renewed in 1864, when the Russians first broke through 
the sand belt which then formed the Southern boundary 
of the empire, and took the rich and populous city of 



50 Slav or Saxon. 

Tashkend. This city contained more than one hundred 
thousand inhabitants. It has been largely remodelled 
by the Russians, is well built, and possesses a theatre, 
a public library, etc., and is entirely hedged in by beauti- 
ful gardens and orchards that surround it. When this 
city was acquired by the Russians, Tchernayeff, the 
leader of the expedition, writes : " The mysterious veil 
which has hitherto covered the conquest of India, a con- 
quest looked upon until now as fabulous, is beginning to 
lift itself before my eyes." In 1868, the overthrow of 
Bokhara followed, but its independent government was 
not entirely destroyed. The Emir was permitted to re- 
main upon the throne, but he became a vassal and the 
blind instrument of Russian rule. The administration of 
the province was less expensive in this form than in any 
other. The conquest of Khiva followed in 1873, and here 
too a kind of autonomy was preserved, but saddled with 
an immense war indemnity, and totally dependent upon 
Russia. In 1876, Khokand was overthrown and bodily 
incorporated. 

But it was found by this time that these Eastern 
khanates were not upon the most direct road to India. 
The elevated and impassable barriers of the Hindoo- 
Koosh stood in the way, and a passage must be found 
more to the West and better suited to military operations 
having their base in the Caucasus and on the shores of 
the Caspian. Meantime a great number of steamers had 
been constructed, and were used in the petroleum traffic 
on that inland sea. A suitable harbor, Krasnovodsk, was 
found on the Eastern shores of the Caspian, and Skobeleff, 



Russian Conquests and Aggressions. 5 1 

the most brilliant of Russian generals, whose name became 
famous in the last Turkish war, projected an expedition 
against the native tribes. A stretch of desert was over- 
come by means of a railway laid in the sand, over which 
the army was transported from the Caspian to the assault 
of Gok Tepe, a city which was heroically defended by 
the natives, the women fighting with the men. Its cap- 
ture was followed by the slaughter of thirty thousand in- 
habitants. It was this same Skobeleff who said : " It will 
be in the end our duty to organize masses of Asiatic cav- 
alry and to hurl them into India under the banner of 
blood and pillage as a vanguard, as it were, thus reviving 
the times of a Tamerlane. ,, 

Then Alikhanoff, an officer who had been degraded to 
the ranks for misconduct, was sent as an emissary to 
Merv, the ancient Maru, " Queen of the World." He in- 
gratiated himself with the Tekkes. Soon Merv submit- 
ted to Russian dominion. The Russians called it a 
voluntary submission, and said " they would send an 
officer to administer the government." But instead of 
an officer an army went, which held the whole population 
as in a vice. Along this Western road there is no natural 
impediment to an attack upon India. A range of hills 
less than a thousand feet high, easily accessible to artillery, 
is all that lies between the Russians and Herat, the 
Gate of India. From this, the road lies through fertile 
plains and easy passes to the Western limits of the British 
dominions. Nor did the Russians stop at Merv. An 
English commission was sent to adjust the boundaries of 
Afghanistan with the Russians, but the latter, without 



52 Slav or Saxon. 

waiting for the commission to do its work, advanced upon 
Herat, in two directions, by the valley of the Murghab 
to Penjdeh, and by the Hari-Rud to Pul-i-khatum. To 
justify their encroachments upon the territory of the 
Afghans, they set up a claim that the frontier of Afghan- 
istan was fifty miles South of that shown by their own 
maps as late as 1881, and that Penjdeh and the Zulfikar 
Pass were North of the line. Penjdeh, in fact, had always 
belonged to Afghanistan and paid tribute to the Ameer. 

The Russian railway is already completed to a point 
only a few hundred miles distant from the railway sys- 
tem of India, and the rapidity of communication from 
Russia to the probable scene of the conflict (six days) 
from the South of Russia to the centre of Asia) gives her 
a great advantage in concentrating troops over England, 
who must resort to a long and tedious line of communi- 
cation by sea. Persia is little more than a vassal state ; 
Russia can count upon its support as well as upon that of 
the wild tribes of Asia, when the prize of the immense 
booty of India is placed before their imagination as the 
reward of conquest. The prestige of Russia among 
Asiatic peoples is immense. Witness the following ex- 
tract from the Persian " Akhtar " : 

During the last thirty years a great deal has been said and 
written by a large portion of the English press and influential 
statesmen about the growing hostility between Great Britain 
and Russia. But as yet they have done nothing, and the Rus- 
sians know very well that, apart from these threats, empty out- 
cries, and unsuccessful protests, they have nothing to fear 
from the English. The Russians, therefore, have not heeded 



Russian Conquests and Aggressions. 5 3 

in the least this flood of empty words, and have proceeded un- 
disturbed and unchecked in the carrying out of their plans. 
The English have always and everywhere pursued their own 
interests of state, and, in our opinion, the Russians are much 
more justified in the pursuit of similar objects, if we consider 
their close proximity to the Mohammedan countries in ques- 
tion. Besides, Russia possesses greater power and authority 
than England. She has a better right to undertake conquests, 
because she shows a greater respect for the laws and rights of 
the natives than England, who, as we have seen, is meddling 
in the most shameless manner with the affairs of India, Aden, 
Cyprus, Afghanistan, Egypt, Zanzibar, and Beloochistan. 

Makdum Kali, a Turkoman bard, predicted not long 
ago, that the whole of the world would succumb to the 
power of Russia. This is the Asiatic idea of it. It is 
true, the Russians have frequently declared they have no 
designs on India, but in 1882 M. DeGiers said that 
they had no intention of occupying Merv and Sarakhs, 
both of which are to-day Russian cities. We know, more- 
over, that Skobeleff actually forwarded to General Kauf- 
mann, during the last Turkish war, a plan for a campaign 
in Central Asia and for exciting against England not only 
Afghanistan but her own native subjects in India, and 
that Kaufmann's military preparations for this purpose 
had commenced, but were stopped when the Berlin 
treaty was signed. What would be the conduct of the 
Indian subjects of Her Majesty, in case of an invasion, is 
very uncertain. English rule in India is no doubt bene- 
ficial. The people are gradually submitting to the in- 
fluences of modern civilization, but this process, being 



54 Slav or Saxon. 

mostly voluntary, goes on much more slowly than the 
Russianizing of the tribes of Tartary, and is much less 
radical. The prejudices of the native populations are very 
deep-seated, nor can they wholly forget, however salutary 
English rule may be at present, that England was guilty 
of most unpardonable wrongs in the past. The English 
do not assimilate with them, do not intermarry, they are 
an alien race. Very few of them reside permanently in 
the country. An Englishman always looks forward to 
the time when he shall return. The absenteeism which 
has been the foundation of so much dissatisfaction in 
Ireland, exists also in India. The natives feel that they 
are being exploited for the benefit of Englishmen, and 
however beneficial the process may be to them, they do 
not like to have good done to them in this way against 
their will. This, together with the continually increasing 
vacillation of the home government from party changes 
and otherwise, weakens greatly the power of Great Britain 
to defend her Asiatic possessions. 



CHAPTER VI. 

RUSSIAN DESIGNS UPON CHINA. 

The designs of Russia upon India and Constantinople 
have been suspended at the present time in favor of her 
still more vast designs upon the Chinese empire. The 
possession of this empire would secure to her an undoubted 
supremacy, not only in Asia, but in the whole Eastern con- 
tinent and in the world. If Russia can make the vast 
population of China a part of her military system she 
need fear no rival upon earth. 

Let us consider in some detail the character and conse- 
quences of the Russian designs upon the Chinese empire. 

What are the extent, population, and resources of that 
empire ? 

It embraces a territory nearly three times the size of 
our own republic. It contains a population of nearly 
four hundred millions — nearly one fourth the population 
of the whole world. 

What is the character of the land ? 

In the West lie the desert plains of Mongolia, the moun- 
tains and the table land of Thibet. But the Eastern half 
of the empire is a territory unexcelled in fertility and re- 
sources — Manchuria to the North, and China proper in 

55 



$6 Slav or Saxon. 

the South. Manchuria is already practically under the 
dominion of Russia. It is to be traversed by Russian 
railroads ; the seacoast is already Russian ; Russian influ- 
ence predominates everywhere. It is a rich country with 
a fertile soil and a climate similar to that of Canada, with 
navigable rivers, fine forests, and valleys well adapted 
to the culture of wheat, barley, rice, hemp, indigo, and 
tobacco ; a land well filled with live-stock, and containing 
abundant mineral resources. 

China proper, with a climate like our own, is one of the 
most fertile regions on the globe. The fact that it sup- 
ports a population of three hundred and fifty millions is 
proof of this. North of the Yellow River, the most im- 
portant crops are millet and barley. In the central and 
southern districts, rice and wheat thrive well; tea, cot- 
ton, sugar, oranges, bamboo, and silk are important 
products. The West abounds in valuable timber. The 
mineral wealth of the country is mostly undeveloped, but 
it is very great. Iron ore in vast quantities is found in 
many places far removed from each other, indicating a 
wide distribution. There is gold in many provinces, 
copper and lead in Southern China, and extensive salt 
works in the North. The coal mines are inexhaustible. 
In the province of Shansi coal is sold at the mine at thir- 
teen cents a ton. There is more coal in that province 
alone than in Pennsylvania. Tea and silk are still the 
largest products for foreign export. So rich is the land 
and so varied the climate that there is probably no pro- 
duct of our own country which cannot be produced in 
China. 



Russian Designs upon China. 57 

What is the character of the four hundred millions of 
human beings which the Chinese empire contains ? 

In the Northwest we have the Mongols, descendants of 
Genghis Khan, who some centuries ago conquered the 
whole of Asia, as well as most of European Russia. In 
Thibet we have a race of hardy mountaineers. In Man- 
churia we find a people, vigorous, thrifty, intelligent, 
conservative, a people which has three times conquered 
China itself. The Manchu dynasty reigns in China to- 
day. 

But it is with the Chinese proper, who form the bulk 
of the population of the Empire, that we are most con- 
cerned. " Among the various races of mankind, the 
Chinese is the only one which in all climates, the hottest 
and the coldest, is capable of great and lasting activity.' ' 
" The predominant quality of the Chinaman is his in- 
dustry. He has almost a passion for labor. In search of 
it he compasses sea and land." In addition to his power 
of endurance, his manual dexterity in the minutest kinds 
of handicraft is well known. His intellectual character- 
istics are peculiar, and in some respects very high. His 
memory is phenomenal. There are Chinamen who can 
repeat by heart all the thirteen classics of China. The 
Chinamen who come to study in our colleges are intelli- 
gent. The Chinese have untiring patience, unfailing 
good humor and cheerfulness under every kind of dis- 
comfort and bodily toil. They are greatly lacking in 
originality, in the power of initiative. They are the 
slaves of custom and conservatism. They will be an im- 
mense power under skilful leadership ; they are helpless 



58 Slav or Saxon. 

without it. The spirit of the Chinaman is essentially 
commercial. He is a tradesman. He sells his labor and 
everything he possesses for a price. He is shrewd at a 
bargain. He can undersell his competitors. He is eco- 
nomical to the last degree, although he will purchase 
comforts and luxuries when he can afford them. In com- 
mercial thriftiness he resembles the Jew. " His instinc- 
tive habit is one of perpetual appraisement. He thinks 
in money/ ' The co-operative spirit is very strong in 
him. Guilds, mutual-benefit societies, and all sorts of 
associations fill an important space in the life of the 
Chinese. The price of Chinese labor is very low. A 
coolie can be employed at from six dollars to eight dol- 
lars a month. An artisan's wages vary from ten to twenty 
cents a day. He works nine hours a day, and lives almost 
entirely on rice and vegetables. Under proper direction 
the industrial capabilities of such a people will exceed 
that of any other race existing in the world. Moreover 
the people of China are easily managed. They are essen- 
tially tractable and peaceful. Although they care nothing 
for politics, the faculty of local self-government and 
especially of family government is developed in a high 
degree. It is the central government at Pekin, and the 
government of the viceroys and mandarins which is at 
fault. And the numerous secret societies, conspiracies, 
and sometimes rebellions in China are the result of the 
atrocious corruption and oppression of the central gov- 
ernment, for which there is no other remedy. Under a 
skilful ruler the Chinese can be easily controlled. 

In the late war with Japan the Chinese proved them- 



Russian Designs upon China. 59 

selves to be poor soldiers, but they were sent against the 
Japanese practically unarmed, unpaid, and badly fed, 
under commanders conspicuous for cowardice. Under 
European officers they are brave and efficient. Chinese 
Gordon could lead them anywhere. Dewey has recom- 
mended the Chinese of his fleet to full American citizen- 
ship on account of their bravery in the battle of Manila. 
The willingness of Chinamen to undergo even capital 
punishment as the hired substitutes of others, the con- 
stant readiness to die when the need arises, indicate that 
the Chinese race has courage of a high order if properly 
directed. The men of Manchuria and Shan-Tung are 
steady, docile, enduring, uncomplaining, and of splendid 
physique. The men from Hunan are dashing, courage- 
ous, and loyal to their own leaders. It is not hard to 
see that under the command of efficient Europeans a 
Chinese army, if well armed, well paid, and well treated, 
would be an efficient fighting machine. 

Perhaps the greatest defect in the Chinese character is 
the lack of patriotism. A Chinaman is deeply devoted 
to his family and his national customs, but cares nothing 
for the dynasty or the government. This is indeed little 
to be wondered at since the national government takes 
small care of him except to tax him and to extort by 
every possible kind of " squeeze " all that can be got out 
of his hard-earned savings. Indeed the lack of progress 
in China is due more to the corruption of the government 
than to perhaps any other cause. The roads and means 
of communication are suffered to fall into neglect. The 
transportation of food, clothing, and other products in 



60 Slav or Saxon. 

the inland provinces is almost impossible. Dreadful fa- 
mines have occurred in China, depopulating vast regions, 
while neighboring provinces had abundance of resources. 
The Chinese officials levy duties and charges at various 
points in transit, thus obstructing all commerce, while 
very little of the revenue reaches the national treasury. 
Official corruption is so universal that it passes without 
remark or censure, while the integrity of the Chinese 
merchants and bankers and their fidelity to contracts has 
become proverbial. 

It is over such a people as this, easily won by corrup- 
tion, easily subdued in war, that Russia seeks to extend 
the strong arm of her autocracy. 

She has already accomplished much in the way of 
territorial acquisition and still more in the way of politi- 
cal influence and domination. As early as 1858 Muravieff 
obtained for Russia the Amoor province, a vast tract on 
the north bank of that River. And in i860, General 
Ignatieff, by diplomacy, transferred to Russia the whole 
Eastern coast of Manchuria from the Amoor River down 
to the Northern boundary of Corea. In this territory the 
Russian port of Vladivostock was established, the most 
important port belonging to Russia on the Pacific coast 
up to the present year, and the proposed terminus of the 
trans-Siberian Railway when that great work was begun. 

When the war broke out between China and Japan, in 
1894, Russia again saw her opportunity. After the 
Japanese victory in that contest, Japan proposed to annex 
certain territory on the Eastern coast of China, but Russia 
forbade it. Russia had reserved that conquest for her- 



Russian Designs upon China. 6 1 

self, so Japan had to be content with Formosa. At the 
northern extremity of the Yellow Sea, commanding the 
gulf of Pechili, is the Liao-Tung peninsula. The gulf of 
Pechili is close to Pekin, and is the outlet of Pekin and 
Tien-Tsin, the commercial port of the capital. There 
are two harbors of great importance on the Liao-Tung, 
Port Arthur, of immense strategic value, and Talien-Wan, 
of perhaps equal commercial value. These ports are open 
all through the winter, and were coveted by Russia as 
furnishing her best outlet to the Pacific. Russia posed 
as the defender of China against Japanese encroachments, 
and by intrigue and corruption at Pekin she secured a 
dominant influence in the Chinese imperial court. Li 
Hung Chang is suspected of being the paid agent of 
Russia; the Empress Dowager is at the head of the pro- 
Russian -faction in the government. At first Russia ac- 
quired the right to winter her fleet in Port Arthur, — that, 
she said, was all that she desired, — then she prevented the 
efforts of England to secure certain treaty ports for foreign 
commerce upon this part of the Chinese coast ; then by 
means of intrigues, whose history will perhaps never be 
known, she secured a lease for ninety-nine years of Port 
Arthur and Talien-Wan, with the right to extend the 
Siberian Railway through Manchuria to these ports. She 
has now practical control of all Manchuria, and holds a 
predominant influence in Pekin itself. The Emperor, 
who had exhibited reform tendencies and a possible lean- 
ing toward the side of England and Japan, is suddenly 
deposed, his adherents have fled for their lives, and the 
Dowager empress, and the Russian faction are now in 



62 Slav or Saxon. 

possession of all power. The Chinese soldiers in the cap- 
ital are under the instruction of Russian officers — and 
Cossack troops in considerable numbers are already 
within the gates of the city for the ostensible purpose of 
protecting the Russian embassy. 

In the proposed conquest of China the Russians have 
a powerful ally in France. Some years ago the French 
annexed Tongking, adjoining China on the South, not so 
much for the intrinsic value of the province as because it 
was the ' ' key to China. ' ' England has Burmah to the west 
of Tongking, and thus adjoins the interior Southern prov- 
inces of China. But Tongking is upon the seaboard, and 
the purpose of the French seems to be, when the dismem- 
berment of the Chinese empire comes, to drive a wedge 
between the British province and the valley of the Yang- 
tse-kiang, the richest part of China, and thus prevent 
British enterprise and British railways from entering 
China from that direction. After the Siberian Railroad 
is completed, and Russian power in the North of China 
is consolidated, it scarcely seems possible for England 
alone to resist the Russian advance. The combined 
armies of Russia and France in time of war can be raised 
to about five million soldiers. Great Britain at the present 
time has less than a million, including her Indian auxil- 
aries, and in any land contest she would be greatly over- 
matched, unless the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria, 
and Italy should come to her aid. But Germany has 
been placated by Russia and allowed to take possession 
of Kiao-Chau Bay and the land back of it; and since 
Great Britain refused to join the Triple Alliance, any aid 



Russian Designs upon China. 63 

from the Powers composing it is more than doubtful. 
Great Britain can command the coast, but cannot pene- 
trate far into the interior if opposed by Russia and France. 
England follows the seacoast and Russia follows the rail- 
road. It is not hard to see that in such a conflict Russian 
domination is assured. 

Nor is there any doubt as to the final purpose of Russia 
in the conquest of the East. As early as September, 
1894, the Novosti suggested the partition of China. 
Prince Oukhtomsky, a friend of the Czar, laid stress upon 
:< the inherent union and gradual confluence of Russia 
with the East. General Komaroff declared in the 
Sveit that " the East with all its countries, as China, 
Beloochistan, and even India, are by the will of Provi- 
dence destined for the Russian people. " " Aspiring in 
Europe to the conquest of Constantinople, in Asia they 
consider themselves the heirs and successors of the great 
World conquerors, Genghis Khan and Tamerlane/ ' This 
is not merely the ambition of the Czar, but it is the 
natural and irresistible impulse of the whole Russian 
people, a policy which will continue whoever may be the 
occupant of the throne. " Russia obeys a law of sun- 
ward and seaward gravitation accelerated by the ambition 
of her statesmen and officials, and resulting in a course of 
development which must progress until it encounters the 
opposition of a nation stronger and better than herself." 
Russia is admirably adapted to the task of absorbing and 
utilizing the vast industrial and military resources of 
China. Her own people are of mixed blood — half- 
Asiatics. They have already absorbed the vast Mon- 



64 Slav or Saxon. 

golian population of European Russia and are absorbing 
the population of Turkestan. Their political institutions 
are not dissimilar, — small self-governing village communi- 
ties at the foundation of the social fabric and a central 
despotic authority at the apex. There is, however, this 
essential difference, — that in China the central author- 
ity is weak and paralyzed ; in Russia, it is practically 
omnipotent. The strong government of the autocrat, 
with its powerful initiative, is the one thing needed to 
transform the inert masses of China into the most power- 
ful human agency on earth. When the power of Russia 
is consolidated in China, India too must give way. 
Russia will become the mistress of Asia, and then Asia 
will begin the conquest of Europe. There is absolutely 
no possibility of resisting Russian aggression unless the 
work is commenced at an early day. 

And the Russian domination would not be ephemeral 
and transitory. 

There is one element of endurance in the Russian dream 
which was wanting in those which have passed away into the 
vistas of history. It does not depend on the genius of one 
man, of an Alexander or a Napoleon ; nor on the politics of 
one generation. Russian ambition is a permanent plant, with 
its roots struck in the sentiments of over one hundred millions 
of people. It requires no originality in statesmanship, but 
proceeds like a cosmic movement, by its own laws, working 
automatically, the particular men who seem from time to time 
to be guiding it being but the accidents of the movement. 
Fast or slow makes no difference in the ultimate progress. 
Moreover, the Russian Empire is built territorily on more 



Russian Designs upon China. 65 

solid foundations than any other, ancient or modern. Every 
addition goes to enlarge its compact mass, leaving no inter- 
stice for hostile lodgment on its flanks. Nor need we search 
deeply into the history of nations to learn what advantages 
belong to the people who fight with their back to the north 
wind. To parley with such a force is like parleying with a 
tidal wave. Only a sea-wall of solid construction can set 
bounds to its inflow. (Colquhon.) 

Henry M. Stanley declares in an article in the Nineteenth 
Century that even now Russia's acquisition of China is 
beyond England's power to prevent; that in order to re- 
sist it, she must join the Triple Alliance. However that 
may be to-day, it is evident that the time is coming when 
it will be beyond the power of any nation, or of any 
European combination, to resist it. The importance of 
the issue is well described in the words of Colquhoun, 
correspondent of the London Times in the Far East : 

The onward march of Russia cannot be stopped even 
by her own rulers unless it encounters a solid barrier, 
while the unchecked advance of that power seems certain 
to confer on her the mastery of the world." 

We have shown at least the danger of future Russian 
domination under favourable circumstances; let us next 
consider what would be the effect upon mankind of the 
supremacy of Muscovite power. Let us look into the his- 
tory and the present condition of that great empire, that 
we may see, as nearly as possible, what the world would 
be if it should become subject to Russian influence. 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 

No one should open a history of Russia with the hope 
that he will get from it that gratification which most of 
the fields of modern history afford. There is less to attract 
our sympathy, less to inspire our enthusiasm, less fellow- 
feeling excited than in the struggle of the barons against 
John, of the Puritans against Charles, of the free cities of 
Italy against the imperialism of Germany, of the Dutch 
Republic against the bigotry of Philip. Somehow events 
seem to take the wrong track. As civilization grows, it 
appears only as a new bulwark of imperial power. As 
knowledge enters, it strengthens only the hand of the 
master and teaches him how to weave the more securely 
the toils which bind the slave. The development of agri- 
culture fastens the serf to the soil ; the opening of the 
mines adds new terrors to penal servitude ; the conquest 
of the boundless steppes of Siberia provides a new place 
for horrible punishments to be inflicted upon the subject 
who offends. The growth of Russia has been the growth 
of all that we detest. The great sovereigns of Russia 
have been greatest in crime and outrage. We learn in 
these pages that human progress is not universal, that the 

66 



The History of Russia. 67 

eddies which turn back are strong and deep. We read of 
the overthrow of liberal institutions, the subjection of free 
cities, the annihilation of enlightened communities, for 
the sole reason that these became inconvenient or dan- 
gerous to arbitrary power. The chivalry, culture, and 
magnanimity which elsewhere so often throw a glamour 
over tyranny itself, and half reconcile us to its injustices, 
even they are absent from these gloomy pages. The 
naked form of force stands to-day, as of old, amid the 
gloomy rocks of Caucasus, and rivets the same iron 
through the Promethean breast of that free spirit that 
gives to mortals the fire which comes from heaven. 

Russian history has been wholly barren in all great in- 
tellectual struggles. It was a stranger to the Reforma- 
tion and to the Renaissance. Russia has no traditions. 
It has been a vast rural empire, a great state of peasant 
communities, ruled by a despot and his army. Even its 
church has little history in common with that of the rest 
of Europe. 

Another thing strikes us in Russian history: the people 
do not appear to have made their own history as else- 
where ; they have rather submitted to influences which 
they have had no hand in directing. It is a growth in- 
fluenced more by external than by internal causes. The 
normal development of the race has been hindered at 
every step ; the invasion of the Mongols stopped it in its 
youth and drove the civilization of Russia from its early 
European channel. Then its Mongolian development 
was stayed, and it was dragged back into the current of 
European life by the giant arm of Peter the Great. 



68 Slav or Saxon. 

Let us review briefly the backward movement from 
freedom to autocracy. The first that we see of the early 
Slavs in history, we find them scattered in little villages, 
each village surrounded by its palisades and controlled 
by its communal village organization, the same which 
exists among the peasants down to the present time. 
This is called the mir. It is perhaps the most primitive 
form of organized social existence. Through all the 
changes which have taken place in higher organisms it has 
preserved its rudimentary character. 

In the formation of the autocracy, these village organi- 
zations, too small to be in the way, too weak to be feared, 
were suffered to remain in their old shape, like the proto- 
zoa which exist to-day, remnants of the earliest form of 
organic life, while the highly developed monsters of the 
Saurian age have long since disappeared. The mir, or 
village community, is made up of all full-grown males 
in the village, who are free from paternal authority. Each 
village is a tiny patriarchal republic. A meeting may be 
convened by any member. It is held out of doors, the 
utmost confusion prevails, there is no chairman, everybody 
talks at once, the crowd listens to whom it will. Before 
any thing can be done it must be agreed to by all. There 
is no such thing as the rule of a majority. The conclusion 
reached, whatever it may be, must, like the verdict of a 
jury or the resolutions of a Quaker-meeting, embody the 
sense of the whole assembly. They talk and convince 
each other, until one side or the other gives in. When 
opinions cannot be reconciled, they sometimes fall to 
berating each other, and a sound drubbing is occasionally 



The History of Russia. 69 

the means of bringing about that harmony of thought 
which their usages require. While the present law of 
the empire permits a majority to control, the peasants do 
not follow any such plan, but adhere firmly to their 
ancient custom. In their discussions there is the fullest 
liberty of speech. Even political questions are some- 
times talked over by the peasants in their meetings, a 
thing which occurs nowhere else in Russia, and instances 
are known where the Starosta, their chief functionary, 
in the simplicity of his heart has read revolutionary pro- 
clamations which were fully considered, in utter ignorance 
that this was one of the highest crimes known to Rus- 
sian law. These village communities are remarkable for 
the humanity of many of their rural customs, the duty 
to help those unable to work, and other fraternal no- 
tions. The highest respect prevails for the decisions of 
the mir, which are absolute and final in all matters 
regulating their internal affairs. The Russian proverb 
is, " Whatever the mir decides, is ordained of God." 

Among the primitive Slavs there was no national union. 
They had little idea even of the unity of tribe. Such was 
their love of liberty that each village resisted all author- 
ity outside of itself. Of course no people could long 
exist with so little cohesive power. The Slavs were torn 
by dissensions. As they were unwilling to be ruled by 
any among themselves, a family of foreign princes was 
called upon to administer the government. These men 
(the Variagi, as they were termed) were probably of Scan- 
dinavian origin. The family of Rurik w 7 as the one from 
which the rulers were taken. At this time the larger 



yo Slav or Saxon. 

towns, which afterwards became the capitals of the prin- 
cipalities, were controlled in a manner quite similar to the 
villages. The whole male population, rich and poor, were 
summoned at the call of any member. This assembly 
was called the vetche. When the princes of the House 
of Rurik came, they did not change this primitive form of 
organization ; they simply added to it an element of mil- 
itary power. The prince was accompanied by his drujina, 
or military household of fellow adventurers, who ate at 
his table and were his companions in battle. In many 
of the larger towns, the authority of the vetche was 
still practically paramount. The prince generally found 
it to his interest to rule in conformity to the will of 
the public assembly. In the House of Rurik, the eldest 
of the blood, whether son, brother, uncle, or other rela- 
tive, was chosen prince of the chief town ; but this rule 
was by no means inflexible. When the prince proved 
distasteful, the vetche assembled, and with the words 
" We salute thee, O Prince," " they showed him the way 
out," and he left with his drujina and sought another 
city, while the vetche which had expelled him called 
another prince of the house more to their taste. When a 
prince died, the territory over which he had exercised this 
very limited sort of dominion was generally divided 
among a number of his relatives. As the princes grew in 
number, the communities over which they were called to 
rule also increased, until there grew up a sort of law of 
political supply and demand. The best cities got the 
best princes. The princes who were not satisfactory to 
the larger towns were compelled to hunt up smaller com- 



The History of Russia. yi 

munities that would take them for rulers. In some of 
the largest cities, before the prince could exercise any 
authority, he was required to enter into the riada, or 
written compact, which clearly set forth the rights of the 
people. This was the case at Novgorod and Pskov. In 
Kiev, the ancient capital of Russia, as well as in many 
smaller towns, his prerogatives were probably greater, and 
the influence of the vetche less. If no available prince 
of the House of Rurik could be found, the vetche some- 
times selected other persons, and once a simple boyar or 
noble of Russian blood was called upon to administer the 
government. 

It is easy to see that where the continuation of the 
prince's authority depended upon his performing his 
duties in a manner satisfactory to all the people, his 
government would be a popular one. Even his drujina y 
his fellow adventurers, were liable to desert him if his 
fortunes fell. 

Rurik himself was called to Novgorod as its first prince. 
This ancient city was built upon both banks of the 
Volkow, a navigable stream communicating with the 
great lakes and with the rivers of the North. It became 
at an early day a commercial centre, and was the largest 
and wealthiest city of Russia, containing at times a 
population of more than a hundred thousand souls. 
The whole body of the citizens was convoked at the 
sound of the great bell, and met in the court of Iaroslaf ; 
any citizen, the very humblest, could call them together. 
The vetcht? could annul the decree of the prince, or dis- 
miss his officers. The meanest citizen might prefer a 



J2 Slav or Saxon. 

charge against him. It not infrequently occurred that 
princes were discharged and recalled several times in suc- 
cession. The republic called itself " My Lord Novgorod 
the Great/ ' and the people said: " Who can equal God 
and the Great Novgorod ? " The prince made an oath to 
depose no magistrate without trial, and to observe the 
laws and privileges of the city. He could not execute 
justice without the help of the posadnik, the local judge, 
nor take any suit beyond the jurisdiction of Novgorod. 
The determinations of the vetche\ like those of the mir, 
were made, not by the majority, but by the unanimity of 
voices. 

This principle seems to be inherent in the Slav peo- 
ples. In Poland it required the unanimous choice of 
the nobles to elect a king. The opposition of a single 
voice could defeat the most important measures. This 
led to anarchy and to the overthrow of the Polish king- 
dom. In ancient Novgorod, too, great trouble came from 
this strange custom. Rival assemblies organized and 
fought out their battles on the bridge ; a minority which 
would not yield was sometimes drowned in the Volkow. 
When Novgorod established colonies, each had its own 
vetche for the management of its local affairs, but it was 
subject to the decrees of the vetche of Novgorod. When 
the public assembly of the parent city was to be con- 
voked upon matters affecting one of the colonies, the 
colony was notified and invited to attend, but there was 
no representative government ; those who came simply 
formed a part of the vetche of Novgorod. Such a crude 
form of government could not last. When the interest of 



The History of Russia. 73 

the colony and the parent state conflicted, the colony 
would declare its independence. Perhaps Novgorod 
would accede to this ; generally there was a war, but the 
colonies were distant and their subjugation was difficult. 
So it came to pass that as the colonies multiplied the 
process of disintegration kept going on. Pskov was 
originally a Novgorodian colony which became inde- 
pendent at an early day. Viatka was another. 

When Rurik was called to Novgorod, other Variag 
princes, though not of the same family, were called to 
Kiev, a city on the Dnieper communicating directly with 
the Black Sea. From thence they made an expedition 
against Byzantium, the first of a series of similar incur- 
sions, through which Greek civilization was brought into 
Russia. The expedition was unsuccessful. Oleg, the 
brother of Rurik, conquered Kiev, and he too sailed 
against Byzantium, and received contributions from the 
Emperor as the price of peace. His successor, Igor, in 
a third expedition ravaged the Greek provinces. Vladi- 
mir, searching for the best religion, adopted that of the 
Greek church and forced baptism upon his unwilling 
subjects. Vladimir divided the cities of Russia among 
his heirs, but one of them, Iaroslaf the Great, subdued the 
others and assumed supreme control. His code of laws 
is still extant. It resembles the contemporary laws of 
other European nations ; it permits private revenge and 
blood atonement, provides for trial by jury, by ordeal, and 
by compurgation. Torture and capital punishment were 
unknown. Iaroslaf held correspondence with European 
states. Inter-marriages were made between the House of 



74 Slav or Saxon. 

Rurik and other royal families. Russia of the eleventh 
century was a European state ; it afterwards became 
Asiatic. Iaroslaf made of Kiev a great capital, containing 
four hundred churches and many schools. He was a 
Russian Charlemagne. He divided his principality into 
fiefs among his relatives and companions, but these grants 
were always temporary and revocable at his will. 

The Variagi were called into Russia for the purpose of 
putting an end to the ceaseless strife of town against 
town. The continual partition of territory among the 
princes of the House of Rurik, their turmoils and dissen- 
sions after the death of Iaroslaf the Great, brought about 
calamities almost as great as the anarchy of the original 
Slavs. The only unity was that of race, language, religion, 
and historical development. The eldest of the house was 
nominally head, but had little power over the others. 
Gradually the tide of Russian emigration flowed East, the 
princes of Suzdal acquired power and attacked Novgorod. 
That great city became for a time subject to a prince 
of Suzdal named Andrei, an unflinching tyrant, and upon 
his assassination disorders followed everywhere. There 
was pressing need of greater national unity. 

Suddenly, from the solitudes of the East, there came a 
strange and unknown power, which was to accomplish 
this work. In frightful suffering and bloodshed w r ere laid 
the foundations of a gloomy despotism. In Eastern Asia, 
at the foot of the Altai mountains, lived the wild race of 
Tartars. Under Genghis Khan, the tribes of this nomadic 
people were united. China was laid waste. All in their 
way became a prey to these savages, who knew no 






The History of Russia. 75 

distinction of age or sex. Soon these herds of innumera- 
ble horsemen swept Westward under Batui, the lieutenant 
of the Khan. They invaded the plains of Russia and 
defeated the army of Kiev at the great battle of Kalka. 
Then they vanished as suddenly as they had come. New 
conquests called them elsewhere. In a few years they 
returned. There was no union anywhere to resist them. 
Such was the discord among the princes, that one faction 
would invoke their aid for the destruction of another. 
Everywhere they went, they demanded the tribute of a 
tenth as the condition of peace. Terrible accounts are 
given of the appearance of this savage people. The whole 
race was an army and marched together. Their wild 
visages, their screams, the neighing of the horses, the 
bellowings of the cattle, struck terror at their approach. 
One after another, the cities of Russia fell before them 
until nothing was left but Novgorod and a small tract in 
the Northwest. Alexander Nevski reigned in that city. 
He is one of the few heroes of history whose patriotic 
efforts gleam brightly through the gloom of a falling 
cause. His bravery and intelligence were shown in his 
successful wars against the Livonians, Swedes, and Finns, 
but when this countless swarm of barbarians appeared, he 
saw that resistance was ruin and he advised submission. 
The whole of Russia bowed under the Mongol yoke. 

The Tartars did not introduce any fundamental political 
changes. They collected the tribute of a tenth, and the 
Russian princes were forced to visit the Horde in token of 
submission. The Tartars built the city of Sarai on the 
lower Volga. Thither the princes went, and the lieuten- 



76 Slav or Saxon. 

ant of the Khan judged their disputes. Often they were 
required to repair to the tents of the Great Khan himself, 
at the Eastern extremity of Asia, across pitiless des- 
erts, where their nobles and they themselves perished 
from thirst, and their dry bones whitened the steppes. 
The Russians were compelled to furnish troops who served 
the Khan in his wars and who shared with his own sol- 
diers the booty of his conquests. No prince could ascend 
the throne or make war without the authority of the Khan* 
There were inter-marriages between the Tartars and the 
princes and nobles of Russia, but this amalgamation did 
not extend to the lower strata of society. The peasants, 
who preserved their purer blood and faith, became distinct- 
ively known as Krestianin or Christians. Gradually the 
Tartars became more civilized. A sort of rude chivalry 
began to prevail among them, while the Russians, de- 
based by their thraldom, vied with each other at the 
court of the Khan in servility and intrigue. Each prince 
sought to excite the Tartars against his brothers, in order 
to acquire their possessions. Their sycophancy reached 
the lowest depths. Gradually the principalities of Eastern 
Russia grouped themselves around Moscow. A race of 
princes, stern, crafty and pitiless, servile to the Khan, 
arrogant to their subjects, assumed the title of Grand 
Princes of Moscow, and laid the foundation of the present 
autocracy. They became collectors of the Khan's tribute. 
The Tartar knew no pity in his exactions and they knew 
none. They ruled with merciless severity. The great 
historian of Russia, Karamsin, says: "The princes of 
Moscow took the humble title of servants of the Khans, 



The History of Russia. JJ 

and it was by this means that they became powerful 
monarchs." Rambaud says : " It was the crushing weight 
of Tartar domination that stifled the germs of political 
liberty." The Eastern type of government has always 
been the absolute type, and both from Asia and from 
Byzantium came the infusion of absolutism into the gov- 
ernment of Russia. The Mongol yoke did not interfere 
with the growth of the Greek church. This church has 
been the constant ally of despotism. It planted autocratic 
ideas into Russia at an early day. The arbitrary codes of 
the Greek emperors, Basil and Justinian, introduced with 
the new faith, were established side by side with the free 
code of Iaroslaf, and the liberty-loving Slavs became 
accustomed to ideas of autocracy, imprisonment, forced 
labor, flogging, torture, and the death penalty. The 
Tartars indeed granted special favors to the Greek church 
and exempted its priests from taxation. Convents multi- 
plied, superstition increased, while scholars and learning 
disappeared. 

One cannot read without sickening, the stories of the 
murders, the tortures, the massacres, the intrigues, the 
slavish subserviency, and the cowardly assassinations 
that mark the growth of the Grand Principality of Mos- 
cow. Women and children are impaled alive, men are 
burned in iron cages, excruciating tortures are prescribed 
by law, mutilation of face and limb are the most ordinary 
kinds of punishment. Neither ties of friendship nor of 
kinship are any protection. The murder of Mikhail by 
Iuri is avenged before the eyes of the Khan himself by 
the son of the murdered man, Dmitri of the Terrible 



yS Slav or Saxon. 

Eyes. It was in the blood of many martyrs that the Holy 
Empire of Russia came to its growth. Great strides are 
made toward consolidation of power. When a prince 
dies, his property is no longer divided among his sons 
or brothers, but the paramount authority is given to 
one alone. Gradually the power of the Tartars becomes 
weakened by wars among themselves, while Russia grows 
stronger by the union of all authority in the hands of a 
single prince. Finally the Russians attempt to throw off 
the yoke of the Khan. Their prince defeats the Tartars 
in a great battle. Then Tamerlane, the conqueror of 
India, becomes Khan, the tide of victory ebbs, and Moscow 
is sacked by his lieutenant. But the Muscovites soon re- 
cover from the disaster. The principality grows in power, 
and the Grand Prince of Moscow becomes the ruler of 
Novgorod also. Tartar suzerainty is again established, 
and the Russian princes rival each other in baseness. The 
Khan confirms the right of a usurper against the lawful 
prince, because, bowed in the dust, he claimed " no other 
title to the principality but the will of the Khan himself." 

At this time Byzantium fell before the conquering Turks ; 
there was no longer a great Czar in the East. The Princes 
of Moscow were soon to shake off the Tartar yoke, and 
to assume the title. 

The re-conquest of Russia from the nomads of the 
South had begun. The Tartars of the steppe conquered, 
but could not assimilate the Russians of the forest. A 
temporary suzerainty was all that they could maintain 
over a people whose agricultural pursuits and modes of 
life were so different from their own. The re-conquest 



The History of Russia. 79 

was a task more thoroughly done. The Russian, in his 
turn, overcame and then assimilated. He threw off the 
yoke of the khans, and then, emerging from his forests 
of the North, to which he had been driven, he not only 
regained the ground he had lost, but spread the network 
of permanent colonization far to the South and East of his 
former boundaries, absorbing into the mass of the Russian 
people whatever of the Tartar element remained. 

The Tartar population in a few cities, such as Kazan 
and Astrakhan, with small and scattered Tartar com- 
munities, distributed here and there like little islets in the 
great ocean of Russian civilization, are the only inde- 
pendent relics which to-day remain to attest the suprem- 
acy of these wild nomads five centuries ago. The infusion 
of Tartar blood into that of the Russian people has not 
been great, but the Tartar domination has left a lasting 
impress upon Russian character. It is to them that we 
must ultimately trace the habits of servitude and baseness, 
the notions of autocracy, and the craft, the dishonesty, and 
dissimulation, which have left their mark upon the charac- 
ter of the Russian people. 

The consolidation of national power is generally accom- 
plished under the leadership of some great man ; that of 
Russia was brought about through the able and crafty 
policy of Ivan the Great. His reign took place during 
an age when, throughout all Europe, the disintegrated 
forces of feudalism were supplanted by the concentrated 
power of monarchy. It was the time when Ferdinand 
and Isabella had consolidated under a single throne the 
petty governments of Spain. It was the period when the 



80 Slav or Saxon. 

Tudors of England had put an end to the interminable 
Wars of the Roses, and had asserted an authority para- 
mount to that of the nobles or the parliament of the 
people. It was the age when Louis XL, by his genius 
and merciless craft, had stamped out the power of feudal- 
ism and given to France a strong but absolute govern- 
ment. Ivan the Great closely resembled the latter 
monarch. He was the most devout of sovereigns ; his 
hypocrisy knew no bounds. While he cut off the noses 
and lips of his prisoners, while he mutilated by horrible 
tortures the highest of his nobility, while he assassinated 
his own kindred for the purpose of appropriating the 
principalities which belonged to them, he kept with the 
utmost punctiliousness all the observances of the Church, 
and prayed and wept with unction for his victims. He 
stirred up dissensions in Novgorod which led to its final 
subjection. The vetche was wholly overthrown, and the 
great bell which called the people together was taken 
away. In his wars with Lithuania, Western Russia, 
which had melted away before the time of the Tartars, 
was partly reconquered. Ivan married Sophia Paleologus, 
the last descendant of the Greek emperors. Greek immi- 
grants flocked to Moscow, bringing with them Greek let- 
ters, Greek arts, and Greek subserviency to despotism. 
Ivan was a law-maker, too, and the code of the Ulogenia 
increasing corporal punishment, the death penalty, and 
torture, was established during his reign. 

It was said that this great tyrant was personally a coward ; 
that his victories were won by his generals while he re- 
mained immured in his palace. The Tartars, torn with 



The History of Russia. 8 1 

internal dissensions, troubled him but little. Under his 
reign their yoke was shaken off, but the Tartar domina- 
tion was no more grinding than the despotism which he 
established. u To a Russian who said that autocracy had 
lifted Russia, when crushed by the Tartars, a foreigner 
answered that it had been lifted only upon its knees/' 
By the Muscovite forms of servility the proudest boyars 
declared themselves slaves of the Czar. The most debasing 
ceremonial, descending from class to class, down to the 
lowest, was ennobled by the commands of religion. And 
yet, without the tyranny established by the Grand Princes 
of Moscow, Russia would never have been the great em- 
pire it is. In this period, which Solovief calls the pro- 
longation of the liquid state, no other form of govern- 
mental organism could have created a stable empire upon 
these boundless plains. Solovief says that " the excessive 
energy of the government was a natural consequence of 
the weakness and incomplete development of the social 
body." 

Vasili, grandson of Ivan the Great, suppressed the liber- 
ties of the last of the free cities, Pskov, whose weeping 
citizens were deprived of their vetche and their bell. 
The nobles of the city were banished, and their places 
were filled by three hundred Muscovite families sent to 
Pskov for that purpose. The annalist cries : " An eagle, 
a many-winged eagle, with claws like a lion, has swept 
down upon me ; he has taken captive the three cedars of 
Lebanon, my beauty, my riches, my children. Our land 
is a desert, our city ruined, our commerce destroyed. 



82 Slav or Saxon. 

My brothers have been carried away to a place where our 
fathers never dwelt." 

All the appanages, or portions carved out for younger 
sons by the princes, were now destroyed; all power was 
united in one prince. The prince's jester rode through 
the streets of Moscow with a broom, crying out that it 
was time to clean the empire of what remained of this 
rubbish. 

Then came Ivan the Terrible. In his time, the strug- 
gle was not against the neighboring princes, but against 
the oligarchy of the boyars. During his childhood, this 
ambitious nobility had assumed full control. Ivan was 
a boy who said little but thought a great deal. At 
last he summoned his boyars and reproached them for 
their evil government. " There were among them," he 
said, "many guilty ones, but this time he would content 
himself with making one example/' He ordered his 
guards to seize Shuiski, the chief of the nobles, and then 
and there had him torn to pieces by hounds. Others 
were banished. The prince who did this was thirteen 
years of age. A period of internal peace and external 
conquest follows. First Kazan, then Astrakhan, strong- 
holds of the Tartars on the Volga, fall before him. Later 
the intrigues of the nobles are renewed. Ivan falls dan- 
gerously ill, the boyars refuse allegiance to his son, and a 
mutiny breaks out in the palace. He knows the fate in store 
for his wife and children if he should die, but he recovers. 
His wife is poisoned ; Kurbski, one of the most trusted 
of his nobles, deserts to the king of Poland ; other plots 



The History of Russia. 83 

are discovered. All the passions of his malignant nature 
become aroused. Then follow the seven periods of mas- 
sacre ; a reign of terror hangs over the nobles. Ivan 
writes to the monastery of St. Cyril, asking the prayers of 
the Church for his victims. The list shows thirty-five 
hundred ; many of the names are followed by the gloomy 
addition, " with his wife and children/' "with his sons," 
" with ten men who came to his help." Ivan slew his 
own child in an altercation. When the spirit of liberty 
revived in Novgorod, the revolt of that great city was 
punished by the physical extermination of its inhabit- 
ants. For five weeks the work of slaughter went on 
within its walls, and sixty thousand is the tale of men 
butchered by his merciless soldiery. Yet Russia grew 
in power under his government. In his reign, an army 
went across the Urals under a brigand chief, and con- 
quered much of Siberia, " the great realm that slopes to 
the Arctic, that sluggish mere and motionless, where you 
hear the sound of the sun rising." Although Ivan was 
willing to use the Church as an instrument of his despot- 
ism, he was statesman enough to perceive that there was 
a menace in the great power of the monasteries, so he for- 
bade them to acquire new lands. His latter years were 
clouded by military disasters in the West, and by the fail- 
ure of his intrigues for the Polish crown. 

Such was the fear of assassination at this time, that it 
was the custom for the relatives of the Czar's wife, and 
not his own, to take control of the affairs of state. 
Since they would be the greatest losers by his death, their 
efforts were directed towards the perpetuation of his life 



#4 Slav or Saxon. 

and power. The penal code was savage. The insolvent 
debtor was tied up half-naked in a public place, beaten 
three hours a day for forty days, and then sold into slav- 
ery. Men were broken on the wheel, impaled, drowned 
under the ice, knouted to death, buried alive up to the 
neck, torn to pieces by iron hooks. The noble killed his 
slave and suffered no penalty. Foreigners were secluded 
and rigidly watched. Even ambassadors were not allowed 
to hold converse with the people, lest Russian manners 
should be contaminated by the outside world. No citi- 
zen could quit the town in which he lived. The very 
peasants hid their property to escape taxation. Women 
dwelt in Oriental seclusion ; they were always minors in 
the eye of the law. They might be beaten by their hus- 
bands at will. Cards and dancing were forbidden, but 
drunkenness was universal. Bear-fights and the jests of 
buffoons were the diversions of the people. Medical 
science was unknown ; medicine and sorcery were synony- 
mous. If the doctor did not cure, he was punished as a ma- 
gician. Society sank to the lowest depths to which thral- 
dom can degrade it. Yet Ivan himself was not wholly a 
barbarian. He was a man of no mean literary ability. He 
encouraged printing and letters; but among such a people 
these could make little headway. 

The successor of Ivan, his son Feodor, was utterly un- 
like his father. He was a good man, but a vacillating 
and imbecile ruler, and the power passed to Boris Go- 
dunof, a powerful noble, who ruled with vigor in the 
Czar's name. Boris prohibited the serfs from changing 
their masters, and thus bound them to the soil. He insti- 



The History of Russia, 85. 

tuted the patriarchate, in order to have a strong ecclesi- 
astical support for his own claims to the throne when Feo- 
dor should die. Dmitri, another son of Ivan the Terrible 
and heir to the throne, is slain, presumably by the secret 
order of Boris, though others were punished for it. Feodor 
dies ; the dynasty is now extinct. The patriarch supports 
the claims of Boris to the throne, and a sort of States- 
General is convened, which elects him. Suddenly a man 
appears claiming to be the murdered Dmitri. He invades 
Russia at the head of a little army of Poles and Cossacks. 
After several battles fought with varying success, the 
nobles, weary of the tyranny of Boris, desert to the 
standard of the usurper. Boris dies, and Dmitri enters 
Moscow and assumes the government. The widow of 
Ivan the Terrible recognizes the usurper as her son, and 
during his short reign of less than a year he displays many 
high qualities. But, upon his marriage with a Polish 
princess, a Catholic, the religious and national prejudices 
of the Russians are aroused and he falls a victim to a 
conspiracy among the nobles, headed by Vasili Shuiski, 
who succeeds to the throne upon his death. Then an- 
other Dmitri appears, a man low-born, brutal, and igno- 
rant, and while these two contend for the sovereignty of 
the empire, Sigismund of Poland enters Russia at the 
head of an army, and his son Vladislas becomes Czar. 
The wildest confusion prevails between contending fac- 
tions, until another States-General settles the succession 
upon Michael Romanoff, the first of the present reigning 
house. The power of autocracy is now permanently es- 
tablished. 



86 Slav or Saxon. 

Farther South, on the untilled steppes, and forming a 
military barrier between Muscovy and the hordes of plun- 
dering and slave-dealing Turks and Crimean Tartars, lived 
the Cossack tribes in a sort of wild liberty, begotten by 
their nomadic life. Some of these dwelt in the Ukraine, 
the most fertile and beautiful of the plains of Russia, 
whose deep black soil had not yet been invaded by the 
implements of systematic agriculture, since a pastoral 
people will not resort to the hard life of the farmer 
while there is land enough to support them and their 
flocks in comfort in their nomad state. These Cossacks 
formed little military republics, protecting themselves as 
best they might from the marauding Moslems in the 
South, whose territories they often invaded, bringing 
back with their plunder the wives of the Tartars, whose 
blood became thus intermingled with their own. In 
their social institutions the most absolute equality pre- 
vailed. In their often-recurring elections the humblest 
might become chief of the tribe or the nation. " Be still, 
Cossack, thou mayest sometime be hetman," was the 
answer to many a complaint. The Cossacks of the Ukraine 
had hitherto preserved this freedom under Polish suzer- 
ainty; a half-barbarous tribe farther South, the Zapo- 
roshtsui, enjoyed still greater liberty, but under Alexis, 
the successor of Michael, they both became subject to the 
Czar, who granted them, for a while, a sort of semi- 
independence. But the Czar's power is too strong; the 
Cossacks resist ; they are overthrown, and their liberty is 
taken ^way. 

We have thus followed the gradual withdrawal of free- 



The History of Russia, 87 

dom from the communities of the early Slavs, until we find 
the race subject to the sternest and most relentless despot- 
ism on earth. 

Autocracy, now firmly established, is following the path 
which despotism is almost sure to take at one time or an- 
other. Russia is becoming fossilized. The influence of the 
Church, which has done so much to consolidate the power 
of the Czar, is opposed to all innovation. The minutest 
habits of social life are regulated by the joint authority of 
a Church and a State which regards every breach of its com- 
mands as a matter both of sacrilege and treason. Sunk in 
semi-barbarism, isolated from the rest of Europe, the Rus- 
sians refuse all instruction, oppose all civilization, and be- 
lieve their way the only true way, their ideals the only 
true ideals. He who proposes an innovation is not only 
a traitor to the Czar, but a rebel to the commands of the 
Most High. 

Suddenly there sprang upon the scene of action a 
colossal figure — one of the few men able to break the 
thraldom which custom and superstition impose, to 
overcome the prejudices of his time; to gather for himself 
the stores of modern civilization, and to scatter them 
among his people. It was an extraordinary circumstance 
that such a man, by the accident of birth, held in his sin- 
gle hand the destiny of the whole Russian State. With- 
out him, the reforms with which he filled a lifetime would 
have required centuries for their accomplishment. He 
was one of the few great men of history to whom the 
power was given to turn with his single arm the whole 
current of a nation's life. He tore Russia by main force 



88 Slav or Saxon. 

from her ancient moorings, and sent her forward upon 
the swift stream of modern civilization. Peter the Great 
was born a barbarian ; he passed much of his turbu- 
lent youth upon the streets of Moscow, associating with 
everybody, acquiring knowledge from every source. To 
his last day he preserved the eager curiosity of childhood, 
an unquenchable thirst for information, violent passions, 
but an earnest purpose, never to be shaken, of making 
Russia a great state and the Russian people a great and 
civilized people. Throwing aside all pomp and pageantry, 
he went everywhere incognito. He was disguised as a 
subordinate in the embassy which he sent to visit the 
nations of Europe. He learned navigation from a skipper 
on the White Sea, and ship-building in the garb of a work- 
man at Saardam and Amsterdam. Russia should know 
these things; nobody else could teach her, so he must 
learn himself. Yet he was as great an autocrat as any of 
his predecessors. He crushed out liberty as relentlessly 
as Ivan the Great. 

His great aim was to make Russia one of the great civi- 
lized states of Europe. To do this, the country must have 
an outlet on the sea. It must have some commerce with 
the outside world, he must own the Baltic provinces, and 
to get these he must fight with Sweden. But the Swedes 
are civilized, they know the modern methods of warfare, 
the Russians do not. In the first encounter, the Russians 
are shamefully defeated, but they can wait. Peter must 
learn from his enemies. At last he is able to beat them 
when fighting two to one. This is a great gain. Charles 
XII. of Sweden, is a man who would play the role of 



The History of Russia. 89 

Alexander, but Peter says, " he will find me no Darius." 
Charles invades Russia, Peter offers terms, but the Swedish 
king will treat only at Moscow. The Russians retire be 
fare him and draw him into the midst of their forests and 
plains in the depths of a Russian winter. Hunger and 
cold destroy half the army of Sweden before it encoun- 
ters the Russians. Then comes Poltava, and the army of 
Charles is annihilated. The star of Sweden wanes, and 
Russia, with its larger resources and greater power of ex- 
pansion, takes the rank which its rival held. So Peter ac- 
quires his outlet on the Baltic. 

It is impossible for us to imagine the difficulties which 
the Czar had to overcome in forcing his reforms upon 
Russia. His efforts to make the nobles shave their beards 
provoked more animosity than all the massacres of Ivan 
the Terrible. The old Russian proverb is u Novelty brings 
calamity" ; reform had to be enforced by the knout, by 
banishment, by death itself. He pushed his reforms in- 
discriminately in every direction. In all things except 
its absolute form of government, Russia must become 
like its neighbors. 

The Church had accomplished what it could in welding 
the despotism, it now stood in the way of reform. It was 
conservative of old customs, hence he limited its authority. 
The patriarchate was abolished. Peter's despotism was 
to be military, not monastic, his autocracy was of the kind 
that crushed equally the boyar and the priest. Every 
noble was required to serve the State for life. To enable 
him to perform this duty, his power over his serfs must 
be maintained and increased. Russia was to be a State 



90 Slav or Saxon. 

centralized and civilized like the France of Louis the 
Fourteenth, yet the patriarchal and Asiatic principle 
which presided over the relations of the father with his 
children, of the Czar with his subjects, of the proprietor 
with his serfs, was to remain unimpaired. On the basis 
of a social organization which seemed to date from the 
eleventh century were to be constructed a system of 
diplomacy, a regular army, a complete order of adminis- 
trative officers, together with schools and academies, and 
the trade and manufactures of a luxurious civilization. 

The reforms which Peter introduced have lasted down 
to the present time, in spite of the repugnance of the 
people, and the imbecility and vices of many of his 
successors. But the rough haste with which he forced 
them upon Russia did great harm. He took no note of 
moral laws ; he weakened the conscience of his people by 
violating it. By copying every thing from other sources, 
he gave no play to Russian originality. Had he paid 
some heed to the law of natural selection, his reforms 
might indeed have come slower, but he would have planted 
in Russia only such things as were capable of growth on 
Russian soil. As it was, he brought into Russia institu- 
tions which were not in accord with the spirit of the peo- 
ple, and which, like borrowed garments, would not fit. 
So long as serfdom, with its primitive and patriarchal 
customs, continued to exist, civilized institutions, affect- 
ing only the upper strata of Russian society, were gro- 
tesquely inharmonious. This dualism of Russian civiliza- 
tion is to-day repeated in Russian character. The most 
opposite extremes are found together. 



The History of Russia. 91 

To a large extent, the old nobility was supplanted by 
the so-called nobility of merit, the nobility of office- 
holders, the various gradations of the Tchin, established 
by Peter, where appointments and promotion depended 
upon service to the State. Peter decreed that land should 
go to the oldest by birth. The seclusion of women 
was abolished, for this was opposed to the civilization of 
Europe, and was not necessary to the support of his 
power. Women were no longer compelled to marry 
against their will. The corruptions of office-holders had 
been frightful. Men solicited offices of the Czar that they 
" might feed themselves " by plundering the people ; these 
things were mercilessly punished. A State Inquisition 
was established for " crimes against the majesty of the 
Czar." Peters method of enforcing his reforms strikes us 
with wonder at its barbarous simplicity. All towns must 
send shoemakers to learn the trade at Moscow ; beards 
were taxed ; no Russian must become a monk until thirty 
years of age, lest population be diminished. He deter- 
mined to establish a new capital by the sea ; he would tear 
the Russians away from their old associations around 
Moscow. St. Petersburg was built by edicts ; he decreed 
that there should be no stone house erected except at the 
new capital ; all stone-masons flocked thither at once. 
Every owner of five hundred peasants must build a house 
in that city. The capital of Russia remains a durable 
monument to his energy. His motto contained the 
secret, not only of his own greatness, but of the continued 
greatness of the Russian State, " Vires acquirit eundo" 
The continued movement of Russian society has pre- 



92 Slav or Saxon. 

served it from the crystallization into which it was falling 
when he took the helm. 

Peter the Great was, perhaps, more than any other 
sovereign in history, a type of the people whom he ruled. 
In the words of Leroy-Beaulieu : 

This union, in a single person, of so many qualities and 
defects, of so many traits scattered through a nation, formed 
a man, wild, strange, almost a monster, but at the same time 
one of the most vigorous and enterprising men, one of the best 
endowed for life and action which the world has ever seen. 
Few nations have the good-fortune of thus having a great man, 
in whom they can themselves be personified, who, even in his 
vices, seems a colossal incarnation of their genius. Peter, the 
pupil and imitator of foreigners ; Peter, who seemed to have 
made it his mission to do violence to the nature of his people, 
and who was looked upon by the old Muscovites as a sort of 
Anti-Christ, is the type of the Russian, the Great-Russian in 
particular. With him it can be said that the sovereign and 
the nation explain each other. A people who are like such a 
man are sure of a great future ; if they seem to lack some of 
the highest and finest qualities which adorn humanity, they 
possess those which confer power and political greatness. 

Under the reign of Elizabeth, the daughter of Peter, 
while religious persecution increased, the death penalty 
was abolished, but a hundred blows of the knout (which 
the victim rarely survived) followed by lifelong exile to 
Siberia, with nose and ears cut off, was an indifferent 
substitute. Eighty thousand prisoners were knouted and 
banished during her reign. 



The History of Russia. 93 

Foremost among the successors of Peter was Catharine 
the Second. Her skilful intrigues in Poland, her defeat 
of the Turks, her conquests in the South, and the exten- 
sion of the territory of Russia in every direction under 
her administration, present a brilliant chapter in Russian 
history. But it is with her internal policy that we are 
most concerned. At the beginning of her reign her ideas 
were extremely liberal ; she established a commission to 
compile a new code, and gave to the commissioners in- 
structions as to the principles which should govern them, 
taken from the brightest pages of the philosophy of the 
18th century. It contained such maxims as the follow- 
ing : " The nation is not made for the sovereign, but the 
sovereign for the nation." " Equality consists in the 
obedience of the citizen to the law alone ; liberty is the 
right to do every thing that is not forbidden by law." " It 
is better to spare ten guilty men than to put one innocent 
man to death." " Torture is an admirable means for con- 
victing an innocent but weakly man, and for saving a 
stout fellow even when he is guilty." 

She talked of the emancipation of the serfs ; she estab- 
lished a society which proposed the question of emanci- 
pation as a subject for prize competition. An article fa- 
voring it won the prize. But Catharine did nothing more. 
Indeed, she finally aggravated serfdom by dividing many 
of her own serfs among the nobles. She forbade peasants 
to complain of their masters. A master might send his 
serf to Siberia at will. She allowed no courts for deter- 
mining the rights of serfs belonging to nobles. She fol- 
lowed the policy of Peter in limiting the power of the 



94 Slav or Saxon. 

Church ; she protected religious refugees from other coun- 
tries ; she appropriated a vast part of the domains of the 
monasteries ; she granted religious toleration. It would 
appear from her correspondence with Voltaire that she 
was personally a skeptic. She introduced a number of 
superficial reforms among the upper classes ; she took 
measures for the instruction of women, encouraged edu- 
cation, and established a hospital for foundlings at Mos- 
cow ; but her reforms went no deeper than the upper 
classes of Russian social life ; the serfs were more abased 
than ever. When the French Revolution shook the 
thrones of Europe, a great change took place in Catharine's 
ideas. . She had the bust of her old friend, Voltaire, re- 
moved to the rubbish-room. Russians suspected of lib- 
eral ideas were closely watched ; the author of a book on 
serfdom, containing views similar to those which she had 
held herself, was sent to Siberia. Several public journals 
were suppressed; she broke off all communication with 
France, forbade the tricolor to enter Russian ports, and 
expelled French subjects who would not swear fidelity to 
monarchy. Despotism received new strength at the 
hands of this brilliant but unprincipled woman. 

Her son Paul, brought up by Catharine in seclusion from 
motives of jealousy, was a tyrant by nature. Under his 
reign the censorship of the press became more rigorous. 
Foreign travel was forbidden. 

Paul was succeeded by Alexander, whose international 
policy, disastrous at first, ended in the overthrow of Na- 
poleon, and made him the chief among the allied mon- 
archs of Europe. An advent of liberalism came in with 



The History of Russia. 95 

his reign, the censorship was mitigated, and travel encour- 
aged. Even a constitution was talked of ; the emanci- 
pation of the serfs was projected ; contracts of manu- 
mission were made valid ; dissenters were tolerated ; 
public education was organized. Under the advice of 
Speranski, elaborate schemes were prepared for the 
reform of the State ; but at last those interested in 
the support of existing institutions became leagued 
against him, and Speranski was overthrown. He was suc- 
ceeded by the reactionary Araktcheef. Then Alexander's 
own character seemed to change ; he became more and 
more conservative. The press was again subjected to 
the strictest censure. We find that even the works of 
Grotius on International Law, as well as the theories of 
Copernicus, were interdicted. The Czar grew gloomy 
and suspicious, and considered himself the dupe of his 
own sentiments. The system of military colonies, which 
has since been used with such wonderful effect, was 
commenced under the reign of Alexander. The Holy 
Alliance, which he instituted, became an alliance of sov- 
ereigns against liberty. 

The revolt which took place when Nicholas mounted 
the throne, planned as it was by a revolutionary society 
which aimed at the destruction of the ruling house, 
strengthened him in his autocratic and conservative ten- 
dencies. It is characteristic of Russian ignorance of all 
notions of freedom, that when the cry of " Long live the 
Constitution ! " was raised, the soldiers believed that the 
word " Constitution " referred to the wife of the Grand 
Duke, Constantine, whom they thought lawfully entitled 



g6 Slav or Saxon. 

to the throne. Pastel, the leading spirit of this unripe 
movement for liberty, said : " I tried to gather the har- 
vest without sowing the seed." Nicholas was the incarna- 
tion of despotism. His tyranny cut Russia off from com- 
munication with Western Europe. The severity of the 
censorship under his reign, the restrictions upon travel and 
education, and the inquisitorial methods of his police can 
hardly be believed by those accustomed to liberty. The 
most stringent regulations were made concerning tutors 
and governesses ; their morality, including their political 
opinions, must be certified to by one of the universities. 
It was forbidden to send young men to study in Western 
colleges, and every obstacle was thrown in the way of for- 
eign travel and residence. Philosophy could not be taught 
in the universities. This branch of knowledge was put 
under the control of ignorant ecclesiastics. It is easy to 
imagine how it flourished under such care. The press 
became the instrument of reaction. A newspaper which 
advocated the ideas of Adam Smith was regarded as dan- 
gerous, and suppressed. The daily journals themselves 
began to wage war against liberty of thought and all for- 
eign innovations. It is melancholy to contemplate the 
misfortunes which Russia suffered under the stern rule of 
Nicholas. Listen to the description of Turgeneff : 

Looking about, you saw venality in full feather ; serfdom 
crushing the people down like a rock, barracks in every direc- 
tion ; there was no justice ; threats were made of closing the 
universities ; foreign travel was out of the question ; it was 
impossible to procure a serious book ; a gloomy cloud hung 
heavily over what was called the administration of literature 



The History of Russia. 97 

and the sciences ; informers were lurking everywhere ; among 
the young there was no common bond, no general interest ; 
fear and flattery were universal. 

Lermontoff, the ablest Russian writer of the period, 
was banished three times to the Caucasus. The French 
Revolution of 1850 excited the indignation of Nicholas. 
The Hungarian uprising against Austria was sternly sup- 
pressed by his armies. He was everywhere the champion 
of "the existing order." 

In 1815, under Alexander I., a liberal constitution had 
been granted to Poland, but in the latter years of that 
monarch, a reactionary current set in. He forbade the 
public sittings of the Diet, the press was gagged, and the 
police vexed and annoyed the people. During the reign 
of Nicholas an insurrection breaks out among the Poles, 
to regain the liberties^ granted to them by the constitution 
of Alexander. But this constitution is incompatible with 
autocracy. Polish patriotism is no match for Russian 
bayonets. Warsaw is captured, " order reigns," the old 
constitution is obliterated, there is no Diet, no Polish 
army, every thing is administered by Russian authority. 
The Polish language is prohibited in the schools, the uni- 
versities are suppressed, five thousand Polish families are 
transported to the Caucasus, property worth over three 
hundred million francs is confiscated. In Lithuania the 
Roman Church is crushed and the bishops disciplined 
into such servility that they ask to be admitted to the 
Russian Church. The nuns who reject this union are 
banished to the forests of Siberia and subjected to 
unheard-of tortures. 



98 Slav or Saxon, 

Then comes the Crimean War, brought about by the 
intrigues of Nicholas. Its issue was unsuccessful, and the 
people, who had submitted to tyranny without a mur- 
mur while the prestige of Russia was unimpaired, now 
began to complain. The most frightful corruption pre- 
vailed everywhere. Anonymous pamphlets came out, 
denouncing the tyranny which had brought on these dis- 
asters. Listen to the following : 

We have been kept long enough in serfage by the successors 
of the Tartar Khans. Arise and stand erect and calm before 
the throne of the despot ; demand of him a reckoning for the 
national misfortunes. Tell him boldly that his throne is not 
the altar of God, and that God has not condemned us forever 
to be his slaves. 

Russia, O Czar ! confided to thee the supreme power, and 
thou wert to her as a God upon earth. And what hast thou 
done ? Blinded by passion and ignorance, thou hast sought 
nothing but power ; thou hast forgotten Russia. Thou hast 
consumed thy life in reviewing troops, in altering uniforms, in 
signing the legislative projects of ignorant charlatans. Thou 
hast created a despicable race of censors of the press, that 
thou mightest sleep in peace and never know the wants, never 
hear the murmurs of thy people, never listen to the voice of 
truth. Truth ! Thou hast buried her ; thou hast rolled a 
great stone before the door of her sepulchre, thou hast placed 
a strong guard around her tomb, and in the exultation of 
thine heart thou hast said, " For her there is no resurrection ! "" 
Now, on the third day, Truth has arisen ; she has come forth 
from aniong the dead. Advance, O Czar ! Appear at the 
bar of God and of history. Thou hast mercilessly trodden 
Truth under thy feet ; thou hast refused liberty ; at the same 



The History of Russia. 99 

time thou wast enslaved by thine own passions. By thy pride 
and obstinacy thou hast exhausted Russia, thou hast armed 
the world against her. Humiliate thyself before thy brothers. 
Bow thy haughty forehead in the dust, implore pardon, ask 
counsel. Throw thyself into the arms of thy people ; there is 
no other way of salvation for thee. 

The melancholy which overspread the entire life of 
Nicholas deepened under discouragement, and the flame 
of his life flickered out in gloom. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE REFORMS OF ALEXANDER II. 

ALEXANDER II., on his accession to power, entertained 
the liberal ideas of Alexander I., and he was able to 
accomplish much more than his predecessor. Nicholas 
had limited the students in each university to three 
hundred. Alexander repealed the limitation. He re- 
duced the excessive fees for passports, and allowed new 
journals to be established; the duties of individuals to the 
State were made less burdensome ; the condition of the 
Jews was bettered ; the children of soldiers and of sailors 
were restored to their parents. (What volumes of sugges- 
tion lie in this sentence!) The corruption during the 
Crimean War was such that Russian officials, who had 
been created into an order of nobility by Peter the Great, 
now fell into universal contempt. Alexander II. did 
something to lessen this corruption by the creation of local 
assemblies, called zemstvos. 

These bodies have played quite an important part in 
Russian economy. Many sanguine friends of Russian in- 
stitutions saw in them the true ideal of government, — 
local self-rule by assemblies selected by the people, with 
the consolidating power of autocracy binding the whole 



The Reforms of Alexander II. 101 

together and dealing with all national and foreign affairs. 
The most sanguine hopes were entertained that these 
bodies would regenerate the entire Russian State, restore 
liberty, abolish corruption, educate the people, and make 
of Russia an earthly paradise. It has been the tendency 
of the Russians to expect great things from each new 
reform introduced by government, and the disappoint- 
ment is always keen and bitter when the performance 
does not come up to the prophecy. This was true of the 
zemstvos, of the Act of Emancipation, of the new tribunals 
and law reforms, and all the other liberal measures intro- 
duced at the beginning of the reign of Alexander. These 
local assemblies contain representatives from the two great 
classes of Russia, from the nobility (which, before emanci- 
pation, was the only land-owning class), and from the 
communes of the Russian peasantry, a class which con- 
stitutes three fourths of the entire population of Russia. 
The law provides that the preponderance in nearly all 
these assemblies shall remain with the nobles, but class 
spirit is not strong in Russia, and nobles and peasants sit 
side by side around the same table and conduct their busi- 
ness concerning education, sanitary measures, highways, 
fire protection, and other local matters in great harmony. 
The main trouble hitherto has been the lack of sufficient 
public interest to induce the representatives to attend. 
Their powers are extremely limited, they have not even 
the right to send a petition to the autocrat. This privi- 
lege is reserved to the assemblies of the nobles only. All 
matters of national politics are strictly forbidden. In one 
or two instances a demand for a constitution was met with 



102 Slav or Saxon. 

a stern reprimand, and the banishment of some of the 
leading spirits. A demand for the abolition of adminis- 
trative exile, by which men are transported for supposed 
political offences without trial, was equally unsuccessful. 
The annual session of twenty days is insufficient to transact 
important business. No power is afforded to these local 
assemblies for enforcing their own resolutions. The gover- 
nor of the province may, by his veto, delay for a year the ex- 
ecution of any of their measures. Meanwhile such measures 
are sent for examination to the central government at St. 
Petersburg. The financial resources of the zemstvos are 
utterly inadequate, yet with all these drawbacks, they 
have done much. Facilities for education were greatly in- 
creased during the first years of their activity. First in 
rank, in this respect, was the zemstvo of Viatka, where a 
majority of the members were peasants. The Russian 
moujik had shown an earnest desire for learning, and did 
all he could for the establishment of village schools, until 
the government interfered and took the matter out of his 
hands. Second among his cares was a desire for better sani- 
tary measures in a country where medical science had been 
hitherto unknown. Female physicians were employed for 
the village communities. These were the only ones accessi- 
ble within the narrow means of the zemstvos. But here, 
too, the government crippled their efforts. Women doc- 
tors were considered dangerous instruments of revolu- 
tionary propaganda, and the government limited the 
number that might be employed. Savings banks, drain- 
age, and a system of mutual fire-insurance also occupied 
their attention. In a small way the zemstvos have done 



The Reforms of Alexander I L 103 

much good, so much, indeed, that the government has 
been continually withdrawing the narrow powers which it 
formerly conceded to them. 

Another reform which marked the first years of the 
reign of Alexander, was the abolition of many of the re- 
strictions of the censorship. " Speech, that was long re- 
strained by police and censorial regulations, now flows 
smoothly, harmoniously, and majestically, like a mighty 
river that has just been freed from ice." Periodicals soon 
appeared with articles on trade and political economy. 
Even official corruption was discussed. 

But these new concessions granted to liberty were soon 
withdrawn. Alexander II. followed in the footsteps of 
Alexander I. ; he was liberal in the beginning, but reac- 
tionary and tyrannical in his later years. 

Another important reform, introduced at the beginning 
of his reign, was the establishment of the new tribunals. 
The procedure^ of the Russian courts had been secret, 
written, venal, and inquisitorial. The police had entire 
control of criminal matters. The fate of suitors com- 
monly depended upon the length of their purses. The 
judges, without exception, supplemented their meagre 
salaries with bribes. The most honest judge was he 
who took from both sides and decided as he thought 
right. A great change was made by Alexander. The 
proceedings became public, higher salaries were given, 
the profession of the bar came into life, and criminal 
causes were tried by jury. Still the right to banish for 
suspected crimes against the State was not affected, and 
later, Alexander recalled much that he had given. Politi- 



104 Slav or Saxon. 

cal trials are secret ; they are confided to military tribu- 
nals ; none but an officer of the army may represent the 
accused. Even the ordinary criminal judges receive, for 
the most part, provisional and probationary appointments. 
The condition of the courts and the perversions of justice 
in recent years will be described hereafter. 

But the great reform of Alexander was the abolition of 
serfdom. It is interesting to trace the history of this re- 
markable institution, and to consider its character as well 
as the character of the people upon whom it was imposed. 
The moujik, or peasant, is par excellence the typical 
Russian. At the time of the Tartar invasion, the 
peasants were the Krestianin, or Christians, who remained 
uncorrupted, free from the infusion of Tartar blood and 
Tartar infidelity. In the opinion of the Slavophils, the 
peasantry of Russia contains the great undeveloped 
potentiality of Russian growth. It is the " unhatched 
e gg " '» the " unawakened Sphynx," which hides within 
its breast the undivulged secret of the future. Endowed 
with considerable natural intelligence, but wholly lacking 
even the most rudimentary instruction, the peasant 
is like the giant of the Russian legend " Ilya of Mur- 
oum," who has never been able to show his power and 
talent. Reduced to servitude, he has been bound to 
the soil and loaded with chains, and even when freed 
at last, he has no longer the use of his limbs nor the 
knowledge of his power„ The causes of serfdom are not 
hard to .find. It was not an Asiatic importation. It was 
an institution which grew up with the Grand Principality 
of Moscow. In the very early history of the Russians, as 



The Reforms of Alexander II. 105 

early as the time of Iaroslaf, or even before that, slaves 
were taken in battle and became the absolute property of 
their captors, but the origin of serfdom is not to be traced 
to this source. The serfs were originally the free cultiva- 
tors of the soil. With the growth of military power the 
peasant naturally sank in the social scale. The history of 
serfdom in Russia is the same as that of similar institu- 
tions in countries which are at the same time agricultural 
and military. While Russian unity was being cemented 
under the Princes of Moscow, the followers of the Prince, 
the nobles and the small landholders had to be equipped 
and properly supplied for war. The labor of the culti- 
vators of the soil was brought into use for this purpose, 
but there was no limitation confining the peasant to 
any particular tract or any particular master ; he might 
change masters every year upon St. George's Day ; land 
had little value except that given it by the peasants 
who dwelt upon it. The larger the estate the more 
productive was cultivation, and the less severe were the 
exactions of the master. The result was that the 
peasants abandoned the lesser proprietors and entered 
the service of the wealthier nobles, and thus a large 
portion of the smaller land owners, who followed the 
Prince in his wars, were unable to equip and support 
themselves properly, and the military service suffered. 
To remedy this, Boris Godunof prohibited the peasants 
from changing their masters, and fixed them to the 
glebe ; he afterward modified this decree and per- 
mitted changes from one small land owner to another, 
but this liberty was again revoked at a later period. 



106 Slav or Saxon. 

Once fixed to the soil, the peasant soon lost all civil 
rights. 

When Peter the Great provided that every noble should 
remain in the service of the State during his entire life, 
a natural corollary of this arrangement was that he should 
be supported by the labor of his serfs, and we find that 
the power of the master, during Peter's reign, was con- 
firmed and strengthened. The State abandoned to the 
landed proprietor the civil administration and police 
power in his domains. The noble became the agent 
of the State for the government of his serfs. 

Peter III. freed the nobility from the obligation of life- 
long service to the State ; the logical sequence of this 
would have been to free the serfs from their correspond- 
ing obligations, but no such step was taken. In the 
reign of Catharine II., the power of the master was still fur- 
ther strengthened ; he could send his serfs to Siberia at 
will. From the reforms of subsequent reigns the serfs 
received no benefit. 

Serfdom was almost entirely confined to the dominions 
of the ancient Principality of Moscow. It prevailed to 
the greatest extent in the neighborhood of the ancient 
Russian capital. It did not exist in the extreme North, 
nor was it found among the Tartars, nor did it ever gain 
a firm foothold in Siberia. The peasantry were about 
equally divided into two great classes — crown peasants or 
serfs belonging to the State, and serfs belonging to indi- 
vidual proprietors. At the time of the emancipation 
there were about twenty-two millions of each class ; there 
was also a much smaller number of household servants 



The Reforms of Alexander II. 107 

and serfs belonging to the appanages. The serfs belong- 
ing to the crown enjoyed greater liberty than the other 
classes. During the entire continuance of this remark- 
able system, the little agricultural villages, composed 
of these serfs, retained their original Slavonic form of 
communal government ; they had their mir to settle their 
internal disputes, and they tilled in common the land 
which they held. 

This was also true with many of the serfs belonging to 
the nobles, but there was no general rule upon the sub- 
ject. Their condition depended largely upon the caprice 
of the masters. The peasants belonging to the large 
proprietors were generally the most fortunate. The great 
noble, Cheremetief, had among his serfs men who became 
millionnaires. There were two systems greatly in vogue 
for securing the labor of serfs. First, the Corvee, under 
which the master was entitled to the labor of the serfs 
three days in each week, the remainder of the time being 
given to the peasant to cultivate his own land for his own 
support. Second, the Obrok system, which was more 
favorable to the peasant. Under this he was permitted to 
enjoy his liberty and to follow whatever trade or occupa- 
tion he desired, upon condition of paying a certain annual 
sum to his proprietor. The household servants bore a 
much closer resemblance to our own slaves ; these were 
not attached to the soil, and were sold and treated in 
much the same manner as the negroes in the South. Up 
to the beginning of the present century there was a regu- 
lar class of slave-dealers, and advertisements of sales ap- 
peared in the public press and in handbills in the streets. 



108 Slav or Saxon. 

Wallace gives many instances : " In this house one can 
buy a coachman and a Dutch cow about to calve"; "To 
be sold — three coachmen, well trained and handsome, 
and three girls, ,, etc. Alexander I. prohibited these ad- 
vertisements, but the traffic continued. Even in the case 
of peasants bound to the glebe, their condition depended 
more upon the character of their masters than upon any 
protection afforded to them by the law. Serfdom bore 
with crushing weight upon all the institutions of Russia. 
The wasteful system of agriculture which it encouraged, 
the violation of human rights which it sanctioned, and 
the moral degradation which it imposed upon the com- 
munity, find their best parallel in our own Southern 
States before the war. The nobles themselves, however, 
were more keenly alive to these disadvantages than the 
slave-owners of the South. Public opinion was gradu- 
ally ripening for a change in the system. Russia had its 
" Uncle Tom's Cabin " in the " Recollections of a Sports- 
man/ ' by Turgeneff, and in " Anton the Unfortunate " 
of Irigorovitch. The disasters of the Crimean War were 
generally laid to the charge of the corrupt social organiza- 
tion fostered by this baleful institution, and a large part 
of the proprietors co-operated heartily with the Czar in 
his projects of reform. 

While something may be attributed to the liberal and 
humanitarian views of Alexander, the main cause of his 
great scheme of emancipation was the financial disad- 
vantage of serf labor. The experience of the world 
everywhere is that no such system can be made highly 
productive, that the proper incentives to industry are 



The Reforms of Alexander II. 109 

wanting, and that there is always more or less danger of 
a social catastrophe in the shape of a servile war. Alex- 
ander repeatedly said that it was better to reform from 
above than from below, and he appeared to regard the 
danger of insurrection as formidable. He proceeded by 
gradual steps, and the emancipation was accomplished in 
a masterly manner. So far as crown peasants were con- 
cerned, there was little difficulty ; there was little to 
do but declare them free, to remove the restrictions on 
their right to come and go, to acquire land, and dispose 
of their goods. The Lithuanians, who had shown a 
disposition to aid Alexander in his project, were also 
authorized to free their serfs. 

The great difficulty with proprietary serfage was that 
granting liberty alone was not enough, for the serf, al- 
though subject to his master, had rights in the land. 
The peasant's maxim was : " We are yours, but the land 
is ours." To grant mere liberty to the peasant and to 
leave the land to his master would be to form an immense 
proletariat. All obligations upon the part of the master 
would be removed and the peasant would still be com- 
pletely at his mercy. A system of peonage would be 
established worse than serfdom. It was necessary to se- 
cure to the peasants at least part of the property they 
had cultivated, and to strengthen the village communities 
as a bulwark against pauperism. 

By the edict of 1861 the peasants were made free, and 
the lands actually occupied by them were granted to 
them. These varied in quantity generally in inverse 
ratio to their fertility ; the average was about nine acres 



HO Slav or Saxon. 

to each male head of a family. The serfs were to pay 
a perpetual rent for the lands granted to them, but they 
were authorized, in their discretion, to purchase these 
lands in fee. Four fifths of the purchase-money was 
loaned to them by the government, and they were to re- 
pay the amount loaned by a series of annual payments, 
extending over fifty years. Most of the peasants availed 
themselves of this right of purchase, and they are still en- 
gaged in the task of paying for the lands conceded to 
them by the Act of Emancipation. The village govern- 
ment of the mir, with the starosta at its head, was con- 
firmed. These villages were combined in the volost or 
Canton under the starschina. 

During the emancipation many disputes occurred be- 
tween the peasants and their former masters in regard to 
the amount and value of the land which they were to 
receive. Reports had been circulated among them that 
the Czar had made them a free gift of the soil which they 
cultivated, and there was great dissatisfaction when they 
found that they were compelled to pay for land which 
they had always considered their own ; but the tribunals 
to which the government had entrusted the delicate ques- 
tion of appraisement performed their office with great 
skill, and the discontent was finally allayed. 

Much credit is due to the old masters for the disinter- 
ested manner in which these " Arbitrators of the Peace," 
selected from the ranks of the nobility, performed their 
functions. Enfranchisement was effected in Russia in a 
manner far more skilful than in our own country, where it 
was accomplished through the terrible agency of civil war. 



The Reforms of Alexander II. 1 1 1 

Yet the Russian people have been perhaps less satisfied 
with its results. 

Subsequent investigation has been made by the govern- 
ment as to the effects of emancipation upon the peas- 
ants. While the ultimate results can scarcely be other- 
wise than good, the temporary inconveniences were very 
great. The serfs have been compelled to work harder 
than ever to pay for the land which they had always 
cultivated and regarded as their own. The complete 
ignorance of the Russian moujik has laid him open to 
vices which serfdom did much to suppress. Drunken- 
ness has probably increased since emancipation. The peas- 
ants are now free, of course, from the former claims of their 
masters ; they used to be obliged to work for him three 
days each week ; they could not change their residence 
without his permission ; the master could sell or mortgage 
the land to which they were attached, permit or forbid 
them to marry, and inflict upon them corporal punish- 
ment. All these things are past. 

Under the new system the land is not granted to the 
peasant personally, but to the village community, by 
which it is held in common. 

This communal system has its advantages and its 
drawbacks. The government collects the taxes, not 
from individuals, but from the mir. In many communi- 
ties the taxes are greater than the rental value of the 
land. In these places the peasants eke out the deficiency 
by industrial pursuits, by the manufacture of articles 
which are sold in the cities and in other parts of the em- 
pire. Many leave their villages and ply their trades else- 



112 Slav or Saxon. 

where, paying to the commune for this privilege their 
ratable proportion of the tax. The rigorous passport sys- 
tem, which prevails in Russia, enables the mir to keep 
them in its power, even though they may travel great 
distances in search of work. But in the most fertile parts 
of Russia, including the great zone of the Black Land, the 
produce of the soil is more than sufficient to pay the tax 
and to afford the means of subsistence to the peasants 
who cultivate it. The land is not farmed in common, but 
is divided among the villagers, at periods varying, in dif* 
erent communities, from one to fifteen years. This distri- 
bution is made by the village assembly, which meets in 
council in the open air, generally upon Sunday, in front 
of the church. 

By this system, the peasants are protected from pauper- 
ism. Each peasant has his own plot of land, and the 
means of gaining a livelihood. Of this he cannot be per- 
manently deprived, even by his own improvidence. But 
the system has its disadvantage in discouraging individual 
enterprise. There is no motive for permanent improve- 
ment of the land, when the man who makes it cannot 
avail himself of the benefit of such improvements. It 
is a system which encourages mediocrity, and consti- 
tutes a bar to any great economical progress. These 
communes are often extremely tyrannical. If one of 
their members is more prudent and successful than the 
rest and saves something, his fellow villagers often compel 
him to disgorge, by fines, capriciously imposed, or by other 
vexatious restraints upon his liberty. It is common for 
the more prosperous peasants to feign poverty. Some- 



The Reforms of A lexander II 113 

times a moujik will buy the right to leave his commune. 
The fact that the mir, as a whole, is responsible to the 
government for all taxes, as well as for the purchase-money 
of the land (which has been loaned by the State), gives it 
great power in controlling the actions of its members. A 
peasant may be publicly whipped or banished to Siberia 
by his fellow villagers assembled in council. 

A commission of inquiry, instituted by the government 
attributes the slow growth of agriculture to the communal 
system, and yet if these communities were more intelligent, 
and farmed the land together instead of dividing it for short 
periods of time, it might be found that ownership and culti- 
vation in common were well adapted to these vast plains, 
where farming ought to be carried on upon a large scale to be 
most productive, and where the use of improved agricul- 
tural machinery could be undertaken more effectively by 
the commune than by a single individual. Conducted 
by intelligence, cooperation is no more impossible in agri- 
cultural enterprises than in manufactures, where it has 
been conducted with such success through the agency of 
corporations. It is the union of this joint ownership with 
dense ignorance, which, in Russia, retards the advance- 
ment of industry. 

Politically, the consequences of emancipation have been 
very slight. It has not affected, thus far, the power of 
the despotism. Economically, it has added something 
to the stimulus to production, but this is still greatly re- 
strained. Its moral effects have been most important. They 
can be seen in greater freedom of conscience and individual 
responsibility, in the improvement in the condition of the 



114 Slav or Saxon. 

women, in the weakening of patriarchal institutions, and 
in the growth of greater individualism. Many of the 
peasants have been able, from their savings, to purchase 
small tracts from their former masters, which they culti- 
vate upon their individual account. In the more fertile 
districts land has increased in value. The nobles have 
been the greatest losers by the change. They had an 
easier life of it while serfdom existed. Since its aboli- 
tion they have had to give up their traditional indolence 
and dependence upon the labor of others. They have 
been compelled to shift for themselves. The skilful and 
provident have held their own, while the shiftless and 
careless have lost their all. The land of Russia is gradually 
passing from the hands of the nobles who used to own it 
all, into the hands of the merchants, and the moujiks. 

Individual ownership and joint ownership being found 
side by side in Russia, if the government will withhold 
its hand, the type which is found best adapted to sur- 
rounding conditions will undoubtedly prevail. This non- 
interference, however, is a thing which can never be 
predicated of the Russian administration. Its tendency 
is to direct the most minute affairs of life. 

After emancipation was accomplished, the nobles, in 
consideration of the sacrifices which they had undergone 
in being deprived of their serfs, demanded reforms in 
their own favor. They claimed for themselves a larger 
degree of liberty. Quite radical measures were considered, 
but the discussions were soon met with police interference, 
and a stern reprimand from the Czar. The Poles asked 
for a constitution ; there were great public demonstrations 



The Reforms of Alexander II. 115 

of unarmed men which could only be dispersed by the 
muskets of the soldiery. All Poles compromised in the 
demonstrations were commanded to sell their estates; 
the use of the Polish language and even the Polish alpha- 
bet was forbidden. Catholic churches were closed ; 
whole villages were destroyed. Poland did not share in 
the new institutions which Alexander granted elsewhere. 

Yet it was undoubtedly the intention of the Czar to 
continue still further, along the lines laid out by himself, 
the reforms which he had begun; and it is now well 
known that his assassination took place on the very day 
when he had resolved to convoke a national assembly 
composed of representatives from the provincial zemstvos. 

It is not strange, therefore, that when Alexander III., 
his son and successor, stood before the mutilated corpse 
of his father, and learned for the first time the particulars 
of the liberal measures which that father had projected, 
he should have adopted the stern reactionary policy which 
has continued with little change down to the present day. 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE DESPOTISM OF ALEXANDER III. 

To the eyes of Alexander III. modern ideas were re- 
sponsible for the nihilism and corruption of the rising 
generation. The conclusion was plain that the patri- 
archal Byzantine orthodox Church and the patriarchal 
paternal autocracy were the only salvation for Russia, 
and, through Russia, for the future of the world. Na- 
tionalism — the exclusion of every Western element and 
influence — was to be the talisman of this regeneration. 
The political and religious instruction of Alexander's 
early manhood had been confided to Pobedonostseff, 
who in 1880 became the Procurator of the Holy Synod, 
— the political head of the State Church, — a man distin- 
guished alike for cool, calculating policy and unbending 
fanaticism. Under his guidance Alexander, a man of 
personal honesty, conscientiousness, and purity of life, 
became convinced of the providential destiny of the 
Eastern Church to regenerate the West, and entered upon 
the gloomy career of bigotry and despotism which still 
remain the dominating characteristics of the autocracy. 

Nowhere else in the world is there the same control by 
the central government, not only of local affairs, but of 

116 



The Despotism of A lexander III. 1 1 7 

the most minute particulars of individual life. The 
people are treated as if they were minors, incapable of 
doing anything for themselves. " Neither a chair in a 
college nor a bed in a hospital can be endowed without 
the intervention of the State/' 

The Russian remains all his life " like a soldier in his 
regiment, who marches, halts, advances, retreats, lifts his 
leg or his foot at the command of the instructing ser- 
geant/ ' Education, the press, and the intelligence and 
virtue of the people are all stifled by this blighting 
influence. 

Thanks to the aid of the rapid auxiliaries furnished by 
modern science ; thanks to steam and electricity, business has 
been more and more concentrated in the hands of the Minis- 
ters. . . . The Russian administration has become like an 
endless chain, along which business has moved mechanically, 
slowly, going up and down, from office to office, to the great 
injury of the interests of the country (Leroy-Beaulieu). 

First, let us consider the policy of Russia in respect to 
education. So completely is the spirit of Russian govern- 
ment opposed to liberal culture, that the universities there 
are not, as with us, simple institutions of learning ; they 
are the centres of all that there is of Russian agitation. 
The university students are almost the only educated per- 
sons in the empire who are not restrained by the caution 
of age or the selfishness of station and property. They 
are almost the only class who discuss, with any freedom, 
political affairs. Hence they are continually subject to 
the interference of the police ; their clubs and unions, and 
even their social meetings, are frequently dispersed. Inqui- 



1 1 8 Slav or Saxon. 

ries are made of porters and of the lodging-house keepers, 
as to the habits of the students, whom they entertain, 
what hours they keep, and what company, and how they 
express themselves. An examination of their books and 
papers is frequently made by the police in their absence. 
The police inspector appointed by the government may, 
with the approbation of the curator, expel a student with- 
out inquiry. He can deny scholarships at will, or refuse 
permission to any student to give private lessons, thus 
taking away the student's means of livelihood. Students 
are often banished for mere breaches of scholastic disci- 
pline, the banishment being sometimes permanent exile. 
The police frequently ask for the names of all who have 
been brought before the university tribunals, for the pur- 
pose of adding exile or other government punishment to 
that of the university. The law of 1881 directs the coun- 
cils of the universities to try all students who have been 
tried and acquitted by ordinary courts, or who have expi- 
ated their offences against the civil law by a term of im- 
prisonment. If the police certify that the young man 
has acted out of pure thoughtlessness, the council may 
acquit or expel him at its discretion, but should they im- 
pute perverse intent, the council must expel him. 

When we come to secondary instruction, we find that 
even the schoolboy, from ten to seventeen years of age, 
may be banished for holding wrong political opinions. 
History, Russian literature, and even geography, are 
discouraged by the Minister of Instruction, on account 
of their dangerous tendencies. In the seminaries the 
classics are almost the only things taught. Nine 



The Despotism of Alexander III. 119 

boys out of ten are dropped at examinations. Such a 
system, as Stepniak says, is not a test of proficiency, it 
is a u massacre of the innocents," a plan for depriving the 
vast majority of all chance of a useful career. The " real " 
or scientific schools are few in number, and the in- 
struction afforded by them is imperfect. A more com- 
plete course is given in what is known as the supple- 
mentary section, which, however, is limited to two years. 
The instruction even here is quite superficial. So inade- 
quate are these schools to meet the demand for education, 
that out of a thousand applicants not more than two hun- 
dred are received, but still the government forbids new 
colleges, lest, being recruited from the poorer classes, they 
should become infected with socialism. 

One would think that even a despotism might en- 
courage primary instruction ; yet in Russia, elementary 
education is so restricted that it confers but little benefit 
upon its possessor. Prior to the emancipation in 1861 
there was scarcely any instruction in Russia of this char- 
acter. A considerable number of the schools which were 
supposed to exist, and which were paid for out of the 
exchequer, existed only " on paper " ; that is to say, the 
officers in charge of them simply took the money and put 
it in their pockets. The reports furnished to the de- 
partment were simply fictions. Some primary instruction, 
however, was given by private effort. Finally, in 1864, con- 
trol of elementary instruction was given to the zemstvos, 
or local assemblies. But the revenues of these bodies, for 
all local purposes, industrial, sanitary, and educational, was 
only one twentieth of the entire revenue. They could do 



120 Slav or Saxon. 

but little ; still they started training-schools for teachers, 
but the Minister of Public Instruction vetoed these pro- 
posed normal colleges, deeming them a means of political 
contamination. After the German war he yielded this 
point reluctantly. Then, in 1870, he concluded that the 
primary schools were sources of political propaganda, and 
he created a sort of private police to watch the teachers. 
The character of the instruction and its political tenden- 
cies, with " observations and conjectures/' were to be 
reported. The numerous interferences, encouraged by 
the government, render the position of a teacher unbeara- 
ble. The regulation of 1874 limits instruction in the 
primary schools to sacred history, reading, writing, and 
the first four rules of arithmetic. The minister refused 
the petition of the zemstvos to permit the teaching of 
geography and Russian grammar. In the schools of Fin- 
land and Poland the Russian language only is taught ; the 
natives cannot learn to read and write their own tongue. 
The interference of government inspectors is always for 
the purpose of suppressing instruction. In 1879 the 
zemstvo of Riazan thanked the inspectors for having 
" abstained from using the means at their disposal to 
thwart the zemstvo in their efforts to promote primary 
instruction and increase the usefulness of the village 
schools." 

The little prosperity that attended primary education 
was derived from the care of these local assemblies, but 
in 1884 the schools were taken from the zemstvos alto- 
gether, and placed in the hands of the ignorant Russian 
clergy, and Pobedonostseff undertook the extraordinary 



The Despotism of Alexander III. 121 

job of dismissing some scores of thousands of village 
school teachers and appointing priests in their stead. 
The priests of Russia are notoriously a worthless class. 
Such is the influence of Russian government on popular 
instruction. 

The despotism is as relentless with the press as with 
education. Since all knowledge is a threat to tyranny, 
the only safe course is to gag the instruments by which 
it can be spread. The censorship is more stringent now 
than it was in the time of Peter the Great. Peter tor- 
tured and put to death the opponents of his reforms, 
but he encouraged general literature. So did Catharine the 
Second at the beginning of her reign, but when the French 
Revolution laid the foundations of popular government in 
Europe, this liberality disappeared ; editors were im- 
prisoned and exiled for advocating ideas which Catharine 
herself had formerly professed. During the stern reign 
of Nicholas, the iron hand of autocracy crushed out all 
the elements of growth. Every manuscript, every news- 
paper article had to be submitted to the censors before 
publication. This censorship still prevails in every part 
of Russia except Moscow and St. Petersburg, and under 
its withering influence the press is practically dead. 

In 1865, during the era of reform, the corrective cen- 
sure was instituted in these two cities. Papers may be 
printed without first submitting them to the censors, but 
if any thing offensive is published, the journal is warned, 
and after three warnings it is suppressed, or the minister 
may suspend publication for three months, without warn- 
ing, or stop sales in the streets, or forbid advertisements. 



122 Slav or Saxon. 

No judicial inquiry is necessary ; he simply does this at 
his own pleasure. Absolute suppression at first required 
a judicial inquiry, but this was too inconvenient. The 
emperor on one occasion, at a ball, ordered two news- 
papers suppressed. The minister usually sends a note to 
the different editors against the publication of various 
matters which he considers it undesirable for the public 
to know, such as " the disturbances among the university 
students/' accounts of "political triais, ,, etc. Journals 
may praise, but must not criticise, the acts of the govern- 
ment in Bulgaria; they must not publish comments on the 
decisions of the zemstvos (their own local representative 
bodies) ; they are forbidden to publish " the report of the 
special commission of the Jews," articles on " peasant 
emigration," articles on " the relation of peasants to other 
landowners," etc., etc., etc. Sometimes newspapers seem 
to be suppressed from mere caprice. In some parts of 
Russia, where the preventive censure exists, the govern- 
ment requires the submission of all articles to a censor 
living in a remote district, involving sometimes fifteen 
days' delay. Daily papers cannot well appear under such 
conditions. The Tiflis Phalanga was suppressed for 
merely presenting to the censor a drawing considered un- 
suitable. In 1884 the editor of the Dielo was ordered to 
sell his journal to a Mr. Wolfman, a reactionist, with the 
statement that if he did not, the censors would refuse 
every article presented. Among the works suppressed 
by Russian censorship are Lecky's " History of European 
Morals," Hobbe's "Leviathan," and Haeckel's" History 
of Creation." 



The Despotism of Alexander II L 123 

By a refinement of tyranny, only possible in Russia, a 
decree of the censure, passed in 1876, forbade the millions 
of inhabitants of Little Russia to print, sell, or circulate 
any works in their own tongue, either original or trans- 
lated. Even the circulation of foreign books in the same 
language is forbidden. The purpose of this decree 
was to compel the people of Little Russia to adopt the 
language of Moscow and St. Petersburg. A whole litera- 
ture has thus been annihilated, and the dialects of the 
Ukraine, in which the lightest and most graceful part of 
Russian genius has expressed itself, have thus been con- 
demned to eternal silence, and the people kept in enforced 
ignorance of all written speech, unless they would consent 
to learn a language other than their own. 

But it is in its judicial system that the Russian govern- 
ment tramples most ruthlessly upon individual rights. 
Whenever the police deem it best, they steal noiselessly 
through the streets and alleys surrounding a private 
dwelling in the dead of night, creep in silence up the 
stairway, gain admittance under some false pretence, and 
invade every room in the house, waking the sleeping oc- 
cupants. Each member of the household is given in 
charge of a policeman, every thing in the house is then 
turned topsy-turvy, books, papers, private letters are care- 
fully inspected — nothing is secret. It is not necessary 
that the police should have any evidence for these searches ; 
an anonymous charge or a mere suspicion is enough. 
Houses have been inspected seven times in a single day, 
sometimes every house in a street is overhauled. If any 
thing is discovered to excite the suspicion of the police, 



124 Slav or Saxon. 

an arrest follows, and the supposed culprit is sent to the 
House of Preventive Detention. There he awaits his 
trial for weeks and months, and sometimes for years. He 
is brought out occasionally for examination. If he con- 
fesses nothing, he is sent back "to reflect. " Sometimes 
the wrong man is arrested and confined a year or two be- 
fore the mistake is discovered. Ponomareff was impris- 
oned thus for three years. 

The solitary confinement to which prisoners are sub- 
jected in this House of Detention is often fatal. Consump- 
tion, insanity, and suicide frequently occur. The exami- 
nation of the prisoners and witnesses is dragged to an 
interminable length ; in the trial of the one hundred and 
ninety-three (one of the celebrated cases), the examination 
lasted four years. Over seven hundred persons, mostly 
witnesses, were kept in the jail during this time. The 
prosecutor said that only twenty persons deserved pun- 
ishment, yet there were seventy-three who died from 
suicide or from the effects of confinement. Confessions 
are frequently extorted by threats of death or of incar- 
ceration in one of the terrible fortresses of Russia. 
Prisoners are deprived of the means of reading and 
writing, to extort evidence from them. The trials are like 
the preliminary proceedings. In 1872 all political cases 
were withdrawn from the ordinary tribunals and " assigned 
to particular Senatorial chambers," appointed by the Em- 
peror. This court could be relied upon to decide in 
compliance with his will. The offence of propagating revo- 
lutionary doctrines is punished by penal servitude for from 
five to nine years ; the punishment is the same as that for 



The Despotism of Alexander III 125 

robbery or unaggravated murder. A number of young 
girls who had been studying at Zurich became impressed 
with the necessity of a larger liberty and greater equality 
for the oppressed lower classes of Russia ; and knowing 
that they could reach the class whom they aimed to in- 
struct in no other way, they took places in the cotton 
factories of Moscow, and taught their fellow-opera- 
tors fraternity and socialism. This was unaccompa- 
nied by violence or any threat of violence, yet they 
received the terrible sentence of penal servitude, which 
was afterwards commuted to perpetual exile in Siberia. 
When the so-called Terrorist period was inaugurated by 
the use of dynamite, and an attack was made upon the 
life of the Emperor, the trial of political offenders was 
taken away from the civil tribunals and committed to offi- 
cers of the army. Even the counsel for the prisoner 
must be a military officer, whose rank and fortune were 
wholly at the mercy of the government. He was not al- 
lowed access to the depositions until a few hours before 
the trial. Men have been judged, condemned, and exe- 
cuted in a single day. Others have suffered death before 
their identity could be proved. Men have been arrested 
at night, taken to a private house, tried there by officers, 
and hanged the next day. Mlodetski was sentenced and 
executed without any judicial inquiry. It appears from 
the strongest evidence that these military judges have 
strictly obeyed their masters, and have simply executed 
sentences prescribed beforehand. In one case the death 
penalty was imposed as a cumulative sentence for a num- 
ber of crimes, each punishable by a few years penal servi- 



126 Slav or Saxon. 

tude. General Mrovinsky and others were sentenced to 
banishment because they failed to discover the Petersburg 
mine. Sometimes the secret informant is rewarded by the 
confiscated property of the condemned. Sometimes the 
judges demand instructions from St. Petersburg before 
rendering judgment. Government officials publicly boast 
that the tribunals will do whatever they desire. Even 
the so-called public trials could not be attended without 
a permit from the presiding judge. They were held in 
small apartments, which were so filled with witnesses and 
officers of court that the public could not enter. Then 
the right of the accused to a public trial was limited to 
the presence of three witnesses, and later, this was re- 
stricted to one person, who must be either his wife, his 
parent, or his child. Newspapers cannot publish their 
own accounts of trials, but must copy the official reports. 
After the murder of the Czar, all trials were heard with 
closed doors, the nearest of kin to the accused were ex- 
cluded, and even the inhabitants of the next dwelling had 
often no suspicion that a political trial was going on. 

But a trial is little more than a formality ; if the accused 
is acquitted, the police may arrest him at once and doom 
him to exile, without hearing, upon mere " administrative 
order." 

The secret council of ten in the republic of Venice 
has long been set before the imagination of men as per- 
haps the blackest type in history of that irresponsible and 
arbitrary tyranny which condemns men to punishment 
upon secret charges preferred by unknown accusers with- 
out process of law, and often for no crime, but upon rea- 



The Despotism of Alexander III. 127 

sons of supposed state policy alone ; yet there is in 
Russia to-day a system founded upon the same princi- 
ples, and quite as repugnant to all ideas of justice. Men 
who have never been tried, nor perhaps even accused, but 
who are simply suspectedhy the police, are often, without 
any inquiry whatever, simply as a matter of arbitrary 
will, placed under so-called " police supervision. " This, 
to be effective, must be at some point distant from the 
residence of the man suspected, so that his friends and 
his supposed fellow-conspirators can have no access to 
him ; hence we have a system of so-called administrative 
exile, by which any person, innocent or guilty, may be 
sent at the pleasure of the police to any part of the 
great Russian Empire. Until recently the term of exile 
might be prolonged indefinitely. Indeed, the secret po- 
lice considered that men who suffered from this kind of 
tyranny were not apt to become reconciled, and they were 
not often permitted to return. This exile frequently fol- 
lows an acquittal in court, in cases where no proof of 
guilt can be procured. This system was not formally 
recognized by the code until 1879, after an attempt was 
made upon the Czar's life. At that time, six generals 
were appointed over six districts of the empire, with the 
right to exile by administrative order " all persons whose 
stay might be considered prejudicial to the public welfare, 
to imprison at discretion, to suppress or suspend any 
journal, to take such measures as might be necessary for 
the public safety." The general terms of their authority 
were in language almost identical with the power given to 
the Roman dictators, to see to it " that the common- 



128 Slav or Saxon. 

wealth should suffer no harm." There are instances of 
exile without proof or trial to the desert wastes of East- 
ern Siberia. Men have been banished simply because 
they belonged to " a dangerous family." Men have been 
sent to the frozen North because the police have confused 
their names with those of others whom they have suspect- 
ed. Often the discovery of the mistake did not lead to a 
revocation. We have instances of exile where the order 
itself declares that they have been found innocent of any 
crime. 

Witness the following : 

The gendarmerie department of Moscow accused Mr. Isidor 
Goldsmith and his wife Sophia of having come to Moscow intent 
on founding a central revolutionary committee. After a mi- 
nute domiciliary search and an examination for the discovery 
of proofs, the charges brought against the before-mentioned 
persons were found to be quite without justification. Conse- 
quently the Minister of the Interior and the Chief of the Gen- 
darmerie decree that Isidor Goldsmith and Sophia his wife be 
transported to Archangelsk, and there placed under the super- 
vision of the local police. 

The exile never knows his accusers, and is often wholly 
ignorant of the reason for which he is transported. These 
exiles are forbidden to teach, lecture, print, photograph, 
practise medicine, sell books or papers, act as librarian, or 
serve in the government employment, such occupations 
being considered " dangerous to the State." The local 
government may veto any other occupation which is con- 
sidered undesirable. The exiles are allowed six to eight 
rubles a month (about $5.00) for their support, if they 



The Despotism of Alexander III. 129 

are of noble birth, otherwise only half of that amount. 
Many of them find it scarcely possible to support life in a 
strange country with these restrictions. All their letters 
are examined by the police. Even their literary societies 
are broken up. It is dangerous for others to become in- 
timate with them. The report of an able Russian officer 
to the government contains the following remarkable 
words : 

From the experience of past years, and my own personal 
observation, I have arrived at the conclusion that administra- 
tive exile for political causes tends rather to exasperate a man 
and infect him with perverse ideas, than to correct him (cor- 
rection being the officially declared object of exile). The 
change from a life of ease to a life of privation, from life in 
the bosom of society to separation from all society, from an 
activity more or less active to an enforced inaction, — all this 
produces an effect so disastrous that often, especially of late, 
there have occurred among the exiles cases of madness, of sui- 
cide, and attempted suicide. 

Men have been exiled in this manner and sent on foot 
with gangs of malefactors to the country of the Yakoutes, 
savages of Eastern Siberia, where they must live in the 
filthy and wretched huts of these half-naked barbarians, 
whose language they cannot speak, whose food they can- 
not eat. Few men survive this transportation more than 
a few years. 

Leroy-Beaulieu thus speaks of this system of exile by 
order of the Police of State : 

No engine of despotism, not even, perhaps, the Spanish 



1 30 Slav or Saxon. 

Inquisition, has cut down so many human beings and crushed 
so many lives, since none has ever acted more discreetly and 
with less noise. There is no list of martyrs so long as that 
of this State Chancellery. The number of its victims, of 
every rank, of every age, of both sexes, is the harder to 
estimate, since, in place of public autos-da-fe y it surrounded 
them almost always with mystery, and hid them in the silent 
snows of Siberia, and being able to get rid of them without 
having blood upon its hands, and without hearing their cries, 
it was itself so much the less scrupulous and compassionate. 

The State Police has remained mistress of the right to im- 
prison, to bury, to banish whomsoever it desires. Under 
Alexander III., as under Alexander II., the High Police remains 
sovereign, independent of justice and the courts, and has no 
account to render, except to its chief or to the Emperor. 

Another law provides that administrative exile shall 
not exceed five years, and that it must be approved by a 
commission composed of two delegates from the Ministry 
of the Interior and two from the Ministry of Justice. 
This commission may, if they choose, ask the accused to 
appear and defend himself. As a guaranty for liberty 
this discretionary formality is absolutely illusory. The 
sum total of injustice and misery will not be materially 
lessened in any such way. 

But even where there has been a trial by the courts, 
very little is settled by the judgment. The fatal point is, 
after conviction, to know where the condemned shall go, 
for there is all the difference in the world between being 
sent to the mines of Siberia and to the fortresses of 
Russia. The friends of the condemned importune the 



The Despotism of A lexander III. 1 3 1 

government to send him to Siberia. His wife, his 
mother, or his betrothed make long journeys to St. 
Petersburg and clamor everywhere for this mitigation of 
sentence, and the condemned is happy indeed if he is sent 
to that terrible land of chains and ice. One would think 
it was hard enough to be condemned to labor in the 
mines, yet the Siberian prisoner thinks it a privilege, for 
the hardest toil is a lighter punishment than solitary con- 
finement within the walls of a prison. The terms of im- 
prisonment vary from twenty to thirty-five years. Politi- 
cal prisoners are treated with greater severity than other 
convicts. Other prisons have outer walls upon three sides 
only, and front upon the street ; political prisons are built 
in the middle of a court, surrounded on every side by 
walls. Vivid accounts are given of the outrages to which 
the prisoners are subjected. As one of them expressed 
it: " We are beaten twice a day and fed once." 

But these prisons, in a land where the cold is sixty 
degrees below zero, are deemed a paradise to the great 
prisons of Russia, in which political offenders are confined 
as in a living tomb. The best among the latter is the 
central prison, at Novo Belgorod. This is a great peni- 
tentiary for the worst grade of malefactors as well as 
political convicts. The common criminals live and work 
together, but the political offenders are doomed to soli- 
tary confinement. Each lives alone in silence in his little 
cell. Even their exercise is taken separately, so that they 
cannot meet. The brigands and murderers confined with 
them are treated with greater consideration. In July, 
1878, the political prisoners refused to eat, because they 



132 Slav or Saxon. 

were denied the right to work in the prison and in the 
workshops with the rest. For eight days they tasted 
nothing, and became so weak that they could not rise 
from their beds, until the governor-general promised com- 
pliance with their request, which promise he afterwards 
violated. Yet these men had been guilty of nothing but 
the simple propagation of the doctrines of socialism. 
There had been no violence nor breach of law other than 
teaching this heresy. These prisoners, contrary to the 
laws of the prison, were put in irons on the slightest pre- 
tence, or thrown into the punishment cells, cages so small 
that men cannot stand in them, or deprived of books at 
the caprice of their brutal jailors, and beds taken away 
even from the sick. Once, when a prisoner who had 
served his probation term was put in irons against the 
rules of the prison, a petition was sent to the governor- 
general, who, in his decision, admitted that the director 
had no right to put the prisoner in irons, but, neverthe- 
less, ordered all the prisoners who had signed the petition 
to be manacled, on the ground that they had insulted the 
director by their complaint, and he gave to each of them 
from one to three days in the black hole. The men impris- 
oned at Novo Belgorod had done nothing but distribute 
socialistic pamphlets. When the work of nihilism went 
to greater lengths, and violence was resorted to, these 
prisoners, who were wholly innocent, were made to feel 
the consequences. Their books were taken away from 
them, they were put in irons, their relatives were exiled 
to distant provinces and sent to Siberia ; even the ven- 
tilating orifices of their cells were closed, so that they 



The Despotism of A lexander III. 133 

could scarcely breathe. Of young men in the prime of 
life, many died. Within four years, out of fourteen 
prisoners confined in the rear cells to the right, five went 
mad, and filled the prison with their howlings. Some 
died insane in their cells. 

But this prison is used only for lighter punishment, for 
those who have not been guilty of crimes of violence. 
Those charged with heavier offences are immured within 
the walls of Schlusselberg, or in the fortress of Peter 
and Paul. To what doom they are condemned in the first 
of these great silent tombs, no one knows, for the voice 
of those who are buried there has never reached the out- 
side world. For those who pass within its accursed walls, 
the superscription of the infernal gates is written thereon : 
" All hope abandon, ye who enter here." Their destiny 
is fixed forever ; there is no hope, no word, no return. 
But the fortress of Peter and Paul, situated, as it is, 
in the very capital of the nation, cannot be so completely 
isolated. This is the great Bastile of Russia. It has its 
traditions like that of the Man in the Iron Mask. This 
fortress is under military government, every attendant is 
a soldier, and the prisoners are forbidden to speak, not 
only to each other, but to their jailers. The jailers visit 
their cells in pairs to prevent collusion. They are im- 
mured in alternate cells, so that they may not communi- 
cate with each other by raps or signals. Spies are placed 
in the intervening chambers, to extract testimony which 
cannot be otherwise secured. Men have been confined in 
this fortress many years and no one knew where they 
were. The identity of these prisoners is concealed by a 



1 34 Slav or Saxon. 

simple numeral, and their names are often unknown to 
the jailers who attend them. 

The effect of this crushing despotism on the natural 
life of Russia is thus graphically stated by Stepniak. 

Despotism has stricken with sterility the high hopes to which 
the splendid awakening of the first half of the century gave 
birth. Mediocrity reigns supreme. . . . All the leaders 
of our zemstvos, modest as are their functions, belong to an 
older generation. The living forces of later generations have 
been buried by the government in Siberian snows and Esqui- 
maux villages. It is worse than the pest. A pest comes and 
goes ; but the government has oppressed the country for 
twenty years, and may go on oppressing it for who knows how 
many years longer. The pest kills indiscriminately, but the 
present regime chooses its victims from the flower of the na- 
tion, taking all on whom depend its future and glory. It is 
not a political party whom they crush ; it is a nation of a hun- 
dred millions whom they stifle. 

This is what is done in Russia under the Czars ; this is the 
price at which the government buys its miserable existence. 

One would think that the more intelligent people of 
Russia would abandon a country thus infected ; but even 
this poor privilege is denied them ; they cannot lawfully 
leave the empire, nor even their own town, without the 
consent of their government. 

Every Russian found without a passport is an outlaw, 
to be hunted down by the authorities. 

In 1879 the police of Tiflis, having received an order to ar- 
rest for expulsion all persons without passports living in the 



The Despotism of Alexander III. 135 

city, there was a general flight among workmen, small mer- 
chants, coachmen, and servants, so that from lack of hands a 
thrifty population suddenly found itself in the greatest diffi- 
culty. Instead of heeding the demands of the police, those in- 
terested fled by thousands, so as not to be brought back to 
their homes by chain-gangs, as the law prescribed. Money 
only could obtain relief from the hardships of the law. 

Political trials have shown that many unfortunates have been 
cast into the party of anarchy and revolution by the lack of a 
passport or the loss of their papers. ' 

The government always prohibits permanent emigration. 
Anywhere the Russian may go he can never lose his citizen- 
ship. Russia does not admit the right of any subject to 
abandon his allegiance, and will not permit any naturali- 
zation elsewhere to interfere with her claims upon his 
obedience. 

We can foretell the fate of liberal institutions if sub- 
jected to Russian domination, not only by the treatment 
of Poland but also by the course that has been followed 
in recent years in respect to Finland. This Grand Duchy 
passed from Sweden to Russia in the year 1800 during 
the wars of Napoleon. Alexander I. set a high value 
upon the acquisition and solemnly pledged himself to 
preserve unchanged the religion and constitution of the 
country. This promise was renewed upon the accession 
of every succeeding Czar, and it was reaffirmed by Alex- 
ander III. The oath of fidelity subscribed by the Finns 
in 1800 has always been observed to the letter by the 
inhabitants of the Grand Duchy, and nowhere in the Rus- 

1 Leroy-Beaulieu. 



1 36 Slav or Saxon. 

sian Empire was there to be found a people more loyal and 
law-abiding. Finland was the only part of the Empire 
where the people had any considerable rights of local self- 
government. The result was that up to the time of the 
accession of Alexander III. the growth and prosperity 
of Finland were phenomenal. Its population increased 
rapidly. Its manufactures in 1876 were twelve times as 
great as in 185 1 ; in 1882 its trade returns were six times 
as great as in 1850. 

But a manifesto put forth by Alexander III. " to form 
a closer union with the Grand Duchy," shattered much 
of this prosperity and destroyed the contentment of the 
people. The stable monetary system of Finland was 
upset by the forced introduction of the Russian paper 
ruble at a value determined by the Russian Minister of 
Finance; arbitrary Russian custom-house methods dis- 
organized trade and manufactures; the postal system 
was turned over to Russian officials, who so abused their 
power of intercepting letters that confidential communi- 
cations could not be sent by mail. The members of the 
Finnish Senate were compelled to resign in consequence 
of an official note from the Governor-General, in which 
the Czar's will was declared to be supreme, and the 
Senate was directed to subordinate itself to the orders of 
the Russian government. 

It is evident that no promise to his subjects will bind 
the autocrat. 




CHAPTER X. 

CONCLUSION. 

WHILE the present Czar has not relaxed nor substan- 
tially modified the iniquities of autocratic rule, and while 
his intrigues in China show that he is animated by the 
same spirit of conquest as his predecessors, he has startled 
the world and won the support of much of its unthinking 
philanthropy by his proposition for a partial disarmament 
— a proposition couched in language expressing a disin- 
terested desire for peace. Let us consider the effect of 
such disarmament upon the relative prospects of Russia 
and the remaining powers of Europe. To illustrate, let us 
suppose that each of the great powers should reduce its 
fleets and its armies to half their present size. A few 
moments' consideration will show that Russia would be 
the gainer and England the loser by such an arrange- 
ment. 

Russia's first aim is China. Her present military force 
would be quite unnecessary for the conquest of that em- 
pire ; even the trifling armament of Japan has proven itself 
sufficient. Moreover it would be impossible for Russia 
to send any vast body of men across Siberia before the 
completion of the trans-Siberian Railway, which is still 

137 



138 Slav or Saxon. 

some years in the future. In the meantime she must 
gain what she can by intrigue and corruption at the im- 
perial court of Pekin, aided by the comparatively small 
bodies of troops now in the vicinity, and small detach- 
ments which can be gradually dispatched to Manchuria, 
keeping England off in the meantime from any active 
aggression by sea or across the Burmese frontier. What 
would be more useful for this purpose than peaceful 
protestations and suggestions of disarmament ? Russia 
already possesses the two important seaports of the Liao- 
Tung peninsula, commanding the approach to the Chinese 
capital. She must fortify these and consolidate her 
power in Manchuria before she can safely move forward 
by force of arms, for she could not at this moment cope 
with the forces which Great Britain could send by sea 
into China. So she must wait, and if in the meantime 
John Bull can be induced to diminish his navy, so much 
the better. If Russia reduces her army she can in a few 
months raise it again to its present footing; if Great 
Britain reduces her navy, it will take many years to re- 
store it to its present condition. Therefore let us dis- 
arm ! 

It is against her Western neighbors, especially against 
the Triple Alliance, that Russia keeps afoot her enormous 
military establishment. If each of these nations will 
reduce its army pro-rata, she will be relatively in as good 
a condition against these neighbors as she is to-day, and 
the danger of an unprovoked invasion of her vast terri- 
tory, with the Russian winter for her ally, is very remote. 

Moreover the great armament of Russia cripples her 



I 



Conclusion. 1 39 

powers of production more than does that of any of the 
other nations. She needs a little time to recuperate be- 
fore the final struggle. What better than a few years' 
truce ? In the meantime if some of her neighbors will 
seize each other by the ears, if England will happily get 
into trouble with France or Germany or America, then 
will come Russia's opportunity, and the Chinese Empire 
with its infinitely productive treasures will become her 
prey. Let no man blindly trust that a despotism whose 
history is reeking with deceit, iniquity, and outrage, is to 
be the Messiah of a new Gospel of Peace on earth and 
good will to all the nations. 

By every lover of freedom the Russian autocracy must 
be regarded as the common enemy of all mankind. 

To all nations that stand for civil liberty — nay to all 
men who take thought for the future of humanity — the 
duty is imperative to join together and stay the aggres- 
sions of the colossal empire whose conquests threaten 
more lasting calamity to the essentials of our civilization 
than did the irruption of the barbarian hordes to the 
civilization of ancient, Rome ; an empire whose universal 
dominion will bring into history the Dark Ages of the 
future — ages tenfold more hopeless than those out of 
which Europe has for many centuries been struggling 
toward the light. 

Our interest in the Eastern Question may seem remote. 
We are so far from the scene of the struggle that it looks 
to us as though the consequences could never reach us. 
But if the Eastern continent, containing nearly the whole 
population of the globe, should become subject to the 



140 Slav or Saxon. 

iron yoke of autocratic rule, would this be the end ? 
Would there be any limit to the aggressions of despot- 
ism ? We may be sure that no friendship with an auto- 
crat will long protect us from final conquest, if he becomes 
omnipotent. The reward of our fidelity will be that 
which was promised by the Cyclops to Ulysses: " Him 
will I eat last in the number of his fellows, and the rest 
before him. That shall be his gift." 

Most valuable perhaps of the fruits of our war with 
Spain has been the strengthening of the ties between 
ourselves and the one country of the old world that was 
capable of recognizing our motives for the struggle — the 
one country with which we ought to be united by bonds 
of sympathy and common interest, as well as of blood, 
language, and common institutions. England and Amer- 
ica are now warm friends. Now is the golden moment 
to see that this friendship is made permanent and indis- 
soluble. Let us not shrink from the union that is open 
to us with the most enlightened, the most humane, and 
the most faithful of the great powers of the earth. The 
warning of Washington against entangling alliances was 
not intended to prevent the cementing of such a union, 
in such a cause, and at such a period in our history. It 
may be wise to keep the child at home, safe from the 
contamination and dangers of the street, but after the boy 
has become a man, he must fight his battle in the world, 
and isolation is no longer desirable nor possible. 

England once stood at our side in defending the 
Western hemisphere against the encroachments of 
the " Holy Alliance.' ' Let us now be ready to do our 



Conclusion. 141 

part for the protection of our common civilization. The 
mere existence of an Anglo-American alliance will go far 
to remove the dangers against which it is directed. 

Let us unite with England in insisting, not merely that 
Chinese markets shall be open to every nation upon equal 
terms, — not merely that the future arteries of Chinese com- 
merce shall be controlled by those who will uphold this 
policy of the " open door," — but also that not another 
foot of Chinese territory shall ever be ceded to Russia or 
to any of the allies of Russia ; and not only in China, but 
wherever our arm extends, let us take our place by the 
side of England in the forefront of the struggle for the 
preservation of liberty throughout the world. 



Economics. 



Hadley's Economics. 

An Account of the Relations between Private Property 
and Public Welfare. By Arthur Twining Had- 
ley, Professor of Political Economy, in Yale Uni- 
versity. 8°, $2.50 net. 

The work is now used in classes in Yale, Princeton, Harvard, Amherst, Dart- 
mouth, Bowdoin, Vanderbilt, Bucknell, Bates, Leland Stanford, University of 
Oregon, University of California, etc. 

"The author has done his work splendidly. He is clear, precise, and 
thorough. ... No other book has given an equally compact and intelligent 
interpretation." — American Journal of Sociology. 

The Bargain Theory of Wages. 

By John Davidson, MA., D Phil. (Edin.), Professor of 
Political Economy in the University of New Bruns- 
wick. i2mo, $1.50. 

A Critical Development from the Historic Theories, together with anexamin- 
ation of Certain Wages Factors : the Mobility of Labor, Trades Unionism, and 
the Methods of Industrial Remuneration. 

Sociology. 

A Treatise. By John Bascom, author of "^Esthetics," 
" Comparative Psychology," etc. 12 , $1.50. 

14 Gives a wholesome and inspiring word on all the living social questions of 
the day ; and its suggestions as to how the social life of man may be made purer 
and truer are rich with the finer wisdom of the time. ^ The author is always 
liberal in spirit, generous in his sympathies, and wise in his knowledge." — Critic. 

A General Freight and Passenger Post. 

A Practical Solution of the Railroad Problem. By 
James L. Cowles. Third revised edition, with ad- 
ditional material. 12 , cloth, $1.25 ; paper, 50 cts. 

'* The book gives the best account which has thus far been given in English of 
the movement for a reform in our freight and passenger-tariff policy, and the 
best arguments in favor of such reform.'' — Edmund J. James, in the Annals of 
Political and Social Science. 

" The book treats in a very interesting and somewhat novel way of an ex- 
tremely difficult subject and is well worth careful reading by all students of 
the transportation question." — From letter of Edw. A. Moselky, Secretary of 
the Interstate Commerce Commission, Washington, D.C 



Q. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, New York & London. 



Sociology. 



Social Facts and Forces. 

The Factory — The Labor Union — The Corporation — 
The Railway— The City— The Church. By Wash- 
ington Gladden, author of " Applied Christianity," 
" Tools and the Man," etc. 12 , $1.25. 

41 The book is full of invigorating thought t and is to be recommended to every 
one who feels the growing importance of public duties." — The Outlook. 

Socialism and the Social Movement in 
the Nineteenth Century. 

By Werner Sombart, University of Breslau, Germany. 
Translated by Anson P. Atterbury. With Intro- 
duction by John B. Clark, Professor of Political 
Economy in Columbia University. 12 , $1.25. 

41 Sombart's treatise on socialism impresses me as admirable ; and the translation 
is certainly an excellent piece of work." — j. B. Clark, Professor of Political 
Economy in Columbia University. 

The Sphere of the State, 

or, The People as a Body Politic. By Frank S. Hoff- 
man, A.M., Professor of Philosophy, Union College. 
Second edition. 12 , $1.50. 

41 Professor Hoffman has done an excellent piece of work. He has furnished 
the student with a capital text-book and the general reader, who is interested in 
political science, with much that is suggestive, much that is worthy of his careful 
attention." 

Anarchism. 

A Criticism and History of the Anarchist Theory. By 
E, V. Zenker. 12 , $1.50. 

44 The fullest and best account of anarchism ever published. ... A most 
powerful and trenchant criticism." — London Book Gazette. 



O. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, New York & London. 










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